


Symbiotic Species

by Brochu4628 (MasterofGalaxies4628)



Category: Bambi (1942), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Super Mario & Related Fandoms, Super Mario Bros. (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Crossover, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-10-10 10:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 89,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10435236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterofGalaxies4628/pseuds/Brochu4628
Summary: Matt is far from your average well-adjusted person. When you have a sharp-tongued, violent, inexperienced human protecting the gentle, friendly inhabitants of a realm that is horribly prone to having its ruler abducted, things tend not to go over well. But when that human is also loyal to a fault and good enough with animals to have befriended a shy, jittery fawn from one of the forests and a small plant creature from somewhere else entirely... things still tend not to go over well.Naturally, Princess Peach often keeps him sidelined from anything too big. But that won't stop Matt from trying his hardest to keep his home and all who live in it safe, whether they like it or not... Usually not.Constructive criticism is welcomed on all chapters.





	1. 1-1: Ground Floor: Karts, Beta Tests, Weird Heroes

The sun shone brightly in the blue sky above, reflecting the radiant colors of the surrounding mountains, grass, pavement, and grandstands. A cyan-shelled Koopa Paratroopa wearing a flying cap and gear while holding a ticking stopwatch hovered by the finish line painted on the pavement alongside a pink Goomba with a blond ponytail and a pith helmet.

"Think he'll clear a minute 30, Parakarry?" the Goomba asked.

"I wouldn't be surprised," the Paratroopa replied. "I've seen him finish in as little as a minute and 24-and-a-half seconds on this circuit."

Just then, a purple dot appeared out from behind a curve in the track some distance away before rocketing down towards the finish line. As it crossed the black-and-white pattern on the tarmac, Parakarry clicked the stopwatch and the purple object screeched to a halt. It was a racing kart: the latest generic model that Gadd Science, Inc. had designed for the Mushroom Kingdom racing tournaments.

The driver sitting in the vehicle stood up and stepped out of it onto the pavement. He was a human, about six feet tall, with a thin build and a straight, stoic expression on his face.

"Nice racing!" the Goomba complimented.

"Thanks, Goombella," the driver replied flatly with a slight nod to the pink mushroom creature. "What was my time, Parakarry?"

"One minute, 24.165 seconds," Parakarry read from his stopwatch.

"...A reasonable time," the human remarked after a few seconds in thought. "So what's next on the 'Boring Things Matt Gets Stuck With' list?"

"Nothing else that I'm aware of," replied Parakarry, adjusting the mailbag he had slung over his shoulder. "Have you tested everything you need to test before the tournament?"

"Let's see: axle alignment, chassis integrity, wheel and tire durability," Matt listed off while counting on his fingers, "motor, glider, the motor that deploys and retracts the glider...heck, I even tested its fuel efficiency...which is terrible, like any racecar, but it's better than karts past."

"Sounds like you thought of everything," said Goombella.

"Mmm-hmm, and that's when I know for sure that I've forgotten something," Matt huffed without even bothering to turn his head, his focus now on a small electronic device he was holding in his hands.

"Do you have that list you just rattled off on your smartphone, there?" asked Parakarry.

"No, the Princess just sent for me," said Matt, putting the phone in his pocket. "She wants me to come back to the castle and check in with her."

"No problem, we'll go with you. Parakarry needs to stop at the Toad Town post office for another mail run anyway, and I—" Goombella was cut off by the angry rev of an engine. In the time she had taken to talk, Matt had jumped back into the seat of the racing kart, put it in gear, and floored the accelerator. Within seconds, the human took off down the tarmac again, leaving the winged mail-turtle and mushroom archæologist behind, dumbfounded.

"...Omigosh, would it kill him to let _someone_ tag along with him, even just like, ONCE?" Goombella finally said with a huff as she and Parakarry looked at the smoking set of tire treads leading off into the distance.

* * *

"So that's the difference between a Pokémon's moves and their Ability: Razor Leaf, Vine Whip, and Sweet Scent are my _moves,_ but Overgrow is my _Ability._ Get it, Princess Peach?"

"I...think?"

A blonde woman wearing a pink ball gown and a golden, jewel-accented crown on her head walked through the main hall of her castle alongside a light-green creature much smaller than her with large red eyes and a darker green leaf sprouting from the top of its head, trying her hardest to make sense of what the small animal was telling her.

"I'm sorry, Chikorita, but I'm still having some trouble understanding the difference," said the princess apologetically. She had always been somewhat intrigued by these "Pokémon" creatures because they weren't native to her kingdom. But sadly, that very fact was part of what made it hard for her to understand them, along with how they sounded so much more complicated than the beasts that _were_ native to her kingdom. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't seem to keep track of any snippet of Pokémon-related information she learned, whether she got it from Chikorita or from her owner—

Her thoughts were cut off as the distant sound of screeching tires reached her ears. Within a second, it rapidly intensified along with the addition of a male scream just before the castle doors exploded inward. Toads jumped, shouted and ran in every direction as Chikorita dropped to her stomach, shielding her face with her leaf, while Peach quickly spun on her heels and covered her face with her hands, everyone trying to avoid damage from the flying wood splinters.

"Oh no!" yelled a Toad. "Is Bowser attacking us again!?"

_"...Ow,"_ came an emphatic but flat exclamation after a few seconds.

"Nope, that's Matt," Chikorita's voice quipped.

The princess turned back around to see that the small green Pokémon was back on her feet and looking at the purple racing kart sitting in the middle of the castle's foyer, several large shards of what were once its front doors lying on the floor behind and on both sides of it, with some smaller shreds in front of the vehicle as well. Seated in the kart itself was her youngest Mushroom Kingdom Defender and Chikorita's owner, Matt, looking stunned and wearing a jagged donut ring of wood around his neck.

"Oh dear! Matt, are you all right?" Peach asked as her subject shook his head to snap out of his daze, before his eyes suddenly widened.

" _That's_ what I forgot: the underwater components!" he suddenly exclaimed as if he had just had an epiphany.

"Matt?" called Princess Peach.

"Huh, what?"

"I asked 'Are you all right?'" the princess repeated.

"Well, now that I know what I was forgetting, I am," said Matt, removing his impromptu timber necklace before brushing some splinters out of his hair. "But first thing's first; I got your message. What's up?"

"Well, have you finished testing that kart prototype?" inquired Peach. "We're approaching the end of September now, so we only have about two months left before the 2011 tournament."

"Don't worry, there'll be plenty of time to produce the karts we need in time for December 4," assured Matt. "All I have left to test is the underwater components...Oh wait, maybe we _should_ worry, actually."

"Why?" wondered Chikorita.

"Goombella, Parakarry and I had to go to the Luigi Circuit that was built for the 2008 tournament because Cheep Cheep Lagoon was closed off," Matt explained. "Not sure if Lakitu and his crew're still working on the course there or he just doesn't want any race participants to see the track before the tournament starts, but either way, I can't test there and don't know of any other reasonably close, kart-reachable locale that has a suitable environment."

"Why don't you try Friendship Lake?" asked Princess Peach.

Matt stopped and looked at his ruler, hoping she was kidding. Taking something man-made like a racing kart over there was not something he wanted to do if he could help it, for several reasons.

"...Why there?" he asked slowly.

"Well, only because it relates to why I called you here to the castle in the first place," said Peach. "It seems that Bowser's minions have been spotted in the southern Moonview Forest."

" _Again?_ That's the seventh time in just the last month!" exclaimed Matt. "Just what ARE they looking for down there?"

"I don't know," Peach mused, "but whatever the case, I'd like you to try and find out what's going on down there, if you get the chance."

"I'm on it, Princess," replied the young Defender, starting the kart back up. "Chikorita, you should come with me; if Bowser's minions are really up to something, it'll probably be good to have some backup."

"I agree," said Chikorita as she ran over to the kart and jumped into Matt's lap. "Especially since we all know how well you tend to fare with Bowser's troops."

"Hey, at least I'm not the one who can't seem to accomplish a goal to save his life....Both figuratively _and_ literally," Matt retorted before spinning the kart around and zooming out through the open, doorless entrance, leaving Princess Peach staring at the mess of splintered timber that littered the castle floor.

"I suppose we should clean this up," she said to herself.

* * *

"Can you try driving in the lane you're supposed to drive in? You're making me nervous," said Chikorita, her leaf flapping in the wind as Matt piloted his kart down a long stretch of pavement running over and amid the Mushroom Kingdom's green, gently rolling plains. The duo were on Moonview Highway, which passed either by or through several of the kingdom's cities and towns, but was most notable for the exceptionally long stretch that Matt and Chikorita were currently in the middle of.

"What are you, my Racer's Ed instructor?" Matt asked, brushing off Chikorita's criticism of traveling south in the road's northbound lane as it hugged the western border of the massive forest that gave the entire highway its name. "Besides, I've done a lot worse than this when we raced here in the last tournament; I can handle traveling in the wrong—OMIARCEUS!!!"

Matt swerved left off the highway, narrowly missing an oncoming car.

"You were saying?" Chikorita's dry voice jabbed at Matt as he continued moving over a small area of grass separating Moonview Highway from the edge of the Moonview Forest.

"...We're almost at Mushroom City, anyway," Matt stated unceremoniously as the towering skyscrapers of the kingdom's largest city began to appear on the horizon, becoming bigger and bigger every second. Pretty soon, they were practically at the metropolis' doorstep, but just before entering it, Matt veered off to the left and headed straight into the Moonview Forest.

"It's nice that Mushroom City sits where it does right next to the Moonview Forest," Matt commented as he steered the kart back and forth around the woods' trees and flora. "It makes finding the West Meadow so much easier: just head due east, more or less."

The kart's wheels continued to propel it and its passengers across the forest floor. Soon after, Matt spotted a point in the distance where the trees seemed to start dissipating. Seconds later, as the kart reached that position, the forest suddenly opened up to reveal a large, grassy area nestled comfortably within it.

"The West Meadow," observed Chikorita as Matt continued to race his kart across the field.

"...Hey, look!" he suddenly exclaimed, noticing a patch of goldenrod and medium-brown fur with white accents on its body and tail next to a small brook flowing through the meadow off to his left. He turned the steering wheel, and the kart curved around and headed for the object just as a deer head sprang up from behind it, facing away from the duo but with ears swiveled and listening to the loud growl of the racing kart's engine. The small fawn turned to face the oncoming vehicle as Matt slowly stepped on the brake pedal.

The kart did not slow down.

"Dang it, brakes, WORK!" shouted Matt, stamping on the pedal as hard as he could. The wheels instantly locked up and the kart skidded right past the surprised deer and straight into the brook with a _SPLASH!_ and spray of water, allowing it to stop in the stream and leaving two brown tracts gouged in the ground behind it leading up to the water.

"Ugh, dang it, first Princess Peach's castle doors, now this!" growled Matt once he had recovered from the sudden stop.

"What's with the complaining?" asked Chikorita, jumping out of Matt's lap before he stood up and got out of the kart himself. "Wouldn't you have gotten soaked during your underwater testing, anyway?"

"I'm not mad at that, I'm mad because I can't figure out why I'm finding it so hard to get a feel for this kart's brakes!"

"Are you two okay?" the small white-tailed deer fawn finally spoke up in a concerned voice, trotting over to the human, Pokémon, and kart all standing in the shallow stream.

"We're fine, Bambi," replied Chikorita. "Just...wet, is all."

Bambi looked Matt and Chikorita for a few more seconds, and then his eyes fell on the kart.

"And what's this?" he asked, stepping closer to the kart when he suddenly stopped and recoiled backwards, his face scrunched up in disgust.

"Oh, sorry," Matt quickly reached for the ignition key in the still-running kart, shut the vehicle down, and started fanning the air around the engine away from them to dispel the exhaust gas that Bambi had most certainly smelled.

"...So what _is_ that?" reiterated the fawn after recovering. "Is that one of those 'kart' thingies you said you could build from scratching stuff?"

"Build from scratch, and yes," Matt said, looking at his ride. "We're on our way to Friendship Lake because I still need to test some water-related properties of this thing."

"Water-related?"

"Yeah," Matt explained. "See, it used to be that whenever someone drove a kart like this deep enough into water, they'd get stuck and have to be dragged out by Lakitu, our race organizer. But this new kart has elements that allow it to move through the water almost as well as on land, so now, not only is water no longer a hazard, it can now be made part of the racetracks, hence why I need to make sure that the water components work as flawlessly as the rest of the kart. Though, personally, I think Lakitu just got tired of constantly fishing us out of the water and thought this up so that he'd only have to fish us out of bottomless pits."

"Why? Do you fall in the water a lot while using these things?" asked Bambi.

"Generally, I like to think not, both for me and all...well, _most_ of the other participants," replied Matt, "but I can recall three separate incidents in the last tournament at Koopa Cape, Maple Treeway, and the old '97 Sherbet Land course that I'm pretty sure left Lakitu quite peeved at a few racers. I'm willing to bet those three fiascoes were the biggest reason for creating this new feature."

"Maybe you should cut the story short right about now," said Chikorita somewhat uneasily.

"Why, something wrong?" Matt wondered, hearing the worry in his friend's voice. Chikorita responded by pointing off into the distance. Matt looked across the meadow in the direction indicated, and then felt his stomach plummet down his body. At the edge of the clearing stood an imposing stag with an impressive antler rack on his head.

_Bambi's father, The Great Prince,_ he thought as the stag began slowly walking towards the group. _And he's already made us. This is _exactly_ what I was afraid of, and I haven't even reached where I wanted to go yet._

The stream water flowed quietly around the racing kart and the legs of Bambi, Matt, and Chikorita, all four staying completely still as The Great Prince continued to advance towards them. Soon, he was standing face-to-face with Matt, and despite the fact that the stag stood only an inch or two higher than him, Matt felt well and truly unnerved by the brown eyes glaring down at him. Not that he'd ever show it, though; he practically never displayed any outward sign of fear, or _any_ emotion for that matter.

"Why are you here?" The Great Prince asked. His voice was fairly calm, but Matt could very much hear the anger in it.

"...Occupational business?" the human tried. He wasn't exactly wrong; the Princess had sent him here in part to investigate reports of Bowser's troops in the forest.

"...I don't know what 'occupational' means," growled the stag, "but you have no business in this forest or with my son. Now begone!"

"Okay, okay! Easy." Matt held his open palms out at arm's length as if anticipating being charged. Walking backwards, he sat back down in the prototype kart, and after Chikorita jumped in with him, sped away from the two deer and across the West Meadow.

"Well, that went better than I feared it might," Chikorita commented after a few seconds, once they were out of the open and back amongst the trees.

"I wish he'd warm up to me already," grumbled Matt. "Yes, I'm a human; yes, some humans hunt; yes, I get that he likely sees me as a threat because of that; and yes, I understand that he drives me off like this to protect his kid. But I've known Bambi for a good while now; if I wanted to harm him, I'd have done so many times over by now."

"So, where are we going now?" wondered Chikorita. "We're not following the river anymore."

"Well, The Great Prince came from the east, so I think we'd be more likely to run into him again if we went that way to Friendship Lake now than if we went south and looked for Bowser's troops first," Matt answered. "So we'll see what's going on down south first and go back up to the lake later. Hopefully by then, he'll have moved somewhere else."

* * *

"Any sign of 'em?"

"No, nothing yet."

A Hammer Bro stood on the green surface of the Moonview Forest's southernmost meadow, several other assorted Koopa Troop soldiers scattered around the field. He was calling up to his kindred partner, currently aboard the solitary airship hovering about 45 feet overhead. The large flying boat was scanning the ground below, looking for subterranean evidence of a resource considered very important to their boss, King Bowser. They had scored in different areas of the South Meadow several times in the past, but their most recent series of searches here had all come up empty. Perhaps their constant excavations had already milked the meadow dry, deprived it of all its buried—

"Care to explain what you're doing down here for the seventh time in just 28-and-a-half days?"

The Hammer Bro's head jerked around along with the heads of every foot soldier standing on the ground.

"Aw, slug butter; it's Matt!" groaned the elite warrior, seeing the human and his Chikorita creature-pet-thing standing near the meadow's edge. The guy was nowhere near as skilled as his Defender brethren, but he sure knew how to be a real nuisance all the same.

"Was that a _groan?_ " Matt asked. "I'm surprised you incompetent dolts don't take me more seriously. I _am_ one of the Mushroom Kingdom Defenders, after all."

"Well, it's kind of hard to take you seriously when you're barely half as effective as Mario or Yoshi," said the Hammer Bro.

"Then I must be pretty darn good," Matt replied with a smirk. "Why don't we see how your comparison holds up?"

Without missing a beat, Matt and Chikorita immediately charged head-on at the small Koopa Troop battalion. Matt leapt forward, landing on the head of the nearest Goomba and jumping seamlessly off of it before flipping over in midair and performing a Ground-Pound on a Koopa Troopa underneath him, instantly sending it spinning across the field and into a Goomba and another Koopa, taking out both. The Hammer Bro finally jolted himself into action as his partner jumped down from the airship above and landed beside him. Pulling out their namesake weapons, the duo ran for Chikorita and Matt, currently facing away from each other and them while focused on trying to knock some Koopa Paratroopas out of the sky with what appeared to be dark green vines coming out of her neck and creatively pick off more of the ground troops that dotted the landscape, respectively.

"Chikorita, Hammer Bros. coming up on your left! Razor Leaf, quick!" Matt suddenly shouted without even turning his head. The small green creature's head shot to the side, glimpsing the large biped turtles, and she immediately turned on them, withdrew the vines back into her body, and began twirling the leaf on her head around, a leaf appearing to peel off of it and fly through the air like a boomerang with every rotation. The Hammer Bros. were forced to stop and turn away as the leaves struck their shells, piercing sharp-metal-on-metal sounds ringing out across the field.

_I'm starting to think I should have brought a bit more than just one airship, me and my bro, and only a medium repository of Goombas, Koopas, and Paratroopas,_ thought the Hammer Bro. The leaf barrage stopped, and he looked up just in time to see Matt running straight for him, a red, yellow, and white flower with eyes in his hand. However, just as he jumped for the Hammer Bro, the Fire Flower abruptly vanished and Matt froze in midair as his clothes began to flash; he had activated the power-up and was starting to transform. In that moment, the Hammer Bro quickly pulled out a hammer and hurled it at his opponent just as the transformation completed, hitting him and making him instantly revert to normal as he came back down to Earth.

"Wh—!? Why, you...!" What had been an expression of surprise on his face when he had been hit quickly turned to one of anger as Matt rushed the Hammer Bro again. He threw another hammer, but Matt dodged it, grabbed him by the throat, and delivered a powerful daze-inducing punch to his face before he could throw any more.

"Hey, get your hands off my bro!" came the voice of the Hammer Bro's partner as Matt hoisted him off his feet and whipped him around to face a different direction. The opposing Koopa Troop soldier unleashed a large volley of hammers at Matt, but the Defender simply jerked his living shield back and forth through the air, making him take all the hits. Finally, the unlucky Koopa felt himself get yanked back and then harshly flung forward straight into his own comrade. He tumbled several times across the ground before coming to rest on his stomach with a sideways view of Matt standing some distance away.

"Was that really necessary?" asked Chikorita, walking over to him from the side.

"It did the job, didn't it?" Matt said dismissively, sounding like he had no idea what could be wrong with the gratuitously harmful maneuvers he had just performed. His attention turned to a Koopa Troopa charging at him from behind, and the Hammer Bro staggered to his feet as Matt stomped on the turtle to send it into its shell before kicking it at a small advancing trio of Goombas. The projectile took out the sentient brown mushrooms just before bouncing off the trunk of a tree at the edge of the meadow and flying right back at the Defender, striking his shins and knocking him down before he could react.

_Idiot,_ the Hammer Bro thought.

"Hey, lemme go!" a voice suddenly shouted. The soldier turned his head to see his partner Hammer Bro holding a squirming, struggling Chikorita by her neck, no doubt to keep her from extending those vines that she had used before.

"Go get Matt!" he said. "I got this one under control!"

He thrust the exotic creature away from him as she attempted to hit him with her head leaf. Undeterred, she immediately whirled it around again to throw another "Razor Leaf" boomerang, but there was too little distance between them, and the weapon hit her target's helmet with the wrong side and bounced harmlessly off of it.

"Are you sure—?" the Hammer Bro started.

_"Hurry!"_ His partner's urging made him jump and about-face back to Matt, who was starting to get back up. He rushed over to the recovering Defender, and after a brief struggle had his wrists held securely together behind his back via his own hands.

"What, no rope?" Matt asked sardonically. "Did you forget to bring any, or do you think I'm just that much of a not-threat?"

"Be quiet!" growled the Hammer Bro. This guy was _really_ starting to get on his nerves. "What should we do with these two?"

"I say we bring them back to King Bowser's Castle," said his partner, coming over with Chikorita still wriggling vainly in his hands. "It'll keep them out of our way, and with how many of our guys they've already managed to take out and us having found nothing underneath the meadow in the last hour, we should probably fall back, anyway."

"Good point." Keeping a firm grip on Matt's wrists with one hand, the Hammer Bro used the other to give the signal for the airship overhead to land. He turned his captive around as their ride slowly descended and gently touched down on the ground and the Goombas, Koopas, and Paratroopas that were still standing began to gather around it.

"Okay, let's go, not-so-tough guy," he said to Matt as his partner jumped back up onto the ship's deck with his hostage.

"I'm lowering the plank now!" shouted the other Hammer Bro as a long gangplank extended from the edge of the deck down to the ground. However, just as he was about to start walking Matt over to it, a new, unfamiliar voice spoke up.

"What's going on here?"

* * *

Matt felt his captor's grip on his wrists loosen as he began taking a look around to see who had just spoken, and he pounced in an instant, yanking his hands free before immediately pivoting on his toes and throwing a strong left hook to the Hammer Bro's face.

"I certainly hope I'm a lot less than half as effective as Mario and Yoshi right now, because this isn't going nearly as well as I thought it would," he said to himself. With his foe stunned, Matt retreated from the airship a short distance to get his bearings and survey the scene.

The group was definitely retreating. Most of the baddies had boarded the airship, leaving just the Hammer Bro, having recovered from the surprise attack. He began throwing some more hammers, forcing Matt to move even further away, before the airship's propellers began to pick up speed. And then a realization hit the Defender like a slap in the face.

_**Oh, crap...**_ he thought. _Chikorita's still on board that airship!_

"And liftoff!" the Hammer Bro shouted, jumping up onto the deck just as the airship withdrew its gangplank and began to ascend back into the sky. Matt sprinted for the vessel, but by the time he reached its position, the boat was already too high up for him to jump onto. Growling, he snapped his fingers in a short vent of anger as the airship sailed off over the Moonview Forest treetops. He turned back and began walking towards the forest border, where he finally saw the owner of the voice that had provided that critical freedom distraction, standing in confusion.

"Bambi!?" Matt exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"A little bird told me something was going on in the South Meadow; what are _you_ doing here?" the fawn responded.

"...My job," Matt finally answered somewhat reluctantly, glancing back at the sky.

" _That's_ your job?" asked Bambi incredulously. "As in like how my dad's job is to watch over the forest all the time, that kind of job?"

"Pretty much," Matt replied. "And the job itself is actually pretty similar to your dad's. Those guys and a lot of others like them like to cause trouble all over the Mushroom Kingdom. As Mushroom Kingdom Defenders, Mario, Yoshi, and I are responsible for thwarting their antics and keeping everything safe and peaceful, much like your father does here in the Moonview Forest."

"Whew, I've heard of danger and adventure, but that is ridiculous!" Bambi remarked.

"No, what's ridiculous is how often they do it!" Matt snorted. "But, look, now's not the time to talk about my job; those guys have Chikorita and I need to rescue—"

He was about to finish the sentence when a loud _"AWOO-GAH! AWOO-GAH!"_ suddenly rang out from his pocket, making Bambi jump in fright and scamper several yards away from him.

_Oh great, not a klaxon call! This is the worst time ever to get one!_ Matt groaned inwardly before taking the source of the alarm, his smartphone, out of his pocket, tapping the "ANSWER" command to silence it, and putting it to his ear.

"This is Matt..." he said, listening to the voice on the other end as Bambi cautiously came back towards him. "Whoa, whoa, slow down, Toad, even _I_ can't understand someone talking _that_ fast... _WHAT!?_... _Shoot!_...Okay, tell them I'll be there as soon as I find a Warp Pipe."

Taking the tiny computer away from his ear and hanging up, he tapped an app icon on its screen and a map of the Mushroom Kingdom came up, dotted by several small pipe icons of varying colors; they marked the locations of known traversable Warp Pipes within the kingdom along with information on where they went.

"What in the world is _that?_ " said Bambi, staring at the device as Matt scrolled across the map.

"Not important," Matt answered, nearly cutting Bambi off without even looking up. As willing as he was to explain his society's culture and creations to his four-legged friend, he did not have the time to explain an entire smartphone.

"Ah, there. That'll get us really close," he said to himself, looking at an info bubble attached to one of the green markers on the screen before raising his head and looking back at Bambi. "Hey, by any chance would you have a craving for an adventure today? I could use your help."

"Um..." Bambi hesitated, sounding unsure. "I...guess, but what exactly's going on?"

"Awesome," said Matt. "Then follow me; I'll explain on the way."

He turned and jogged a short distance down the meadow/forest border with Bambi trotting along behind him, until he came to where he had parked his racing kart prior to confronting the Koopa Troop forest intruders. He started the vehicle up and began to sit down in it as Bambi caught up to him before recoiling back after smelling the engine exhaust again.

"Ugh, can you make that kart smell less like...whatever that smell is?" the deer choked out, making Matt take another glance at his smartphone.

"Sure, the pipe's within walking distance, anyway," he said, shutting the kart off before jumping back out and moving off into the woods with Bambi. "...I guess I should probably tell you what this is all about now."

"Yeah, what _is_ this all about?"

"Well, long story short, there's trouble brewing back at Princess Peach's Castle, and I need to go help put a stop to it," Matt explained.

_"...'Brewing'?"_ asked Bambi.

"Eh, _happening,_ " said Matt, fixing his choice of word so that Bambi would understand. "Mario and Yoshi are up there already, but it sounded like they're having trouble holding their opponents off. Hence why they called me and why I asked you to come along with me."

He kept shooting glances at his phone as he led the fawn through the woods, watching as the location dot representing them inched towards the marker he had singled out. Finally, the two came to a large green pipe sticking out of the ground.

"There we go," Matt said, putting his smartphone back in his pocket.

"Oh yeah, this; I've seen this here before," Bambi observed. "...What exactly is it?"

"This is a Warp Pipe," Matt said. "There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of these things all over the Mushroom Kingdom, although they're pretty sparse in the Moonview Forest. Many of them are solid, but just as many of them are hollow like this one, and can be used to transport anything that fits in them back and forth between their two ends."

"And where's the other end?" asked Bambi.

"Could be just across a field, could be all the way on the other side of the world," replied Matt. "This particular pipe will drop us a short distance away from Princess Peach's Castle. Ready to go?"

Bambi stared down into the metal pipe at the black void it seemed to get swallowed into, an expression of uncertainty plastered firmly on his face.

"Don't worry, it's perfectly safe," Matt said in a reassuring voice. "And unlike most times that gets said, it's completely true. C'mon, I'll help you in."

Walking over to Bambi, he picked up the tentative fawn gently by the waist, hoisted him over the Warp Pipe's edge and lowered him as far down into it as his arms would allow before abruptly letting go. Bambi managed to let out a short shout of surprise before disappearing into the blackness.

_Watch out, Bowser, because I'm on my way, and we all know your plans always fail whenever a Defender's coming for you,_ Matt thought before jumping into the green pipe himself.


	2. 1-2: A Defender's Welcome

Freefalling. Something Bambi had not often experienced, and certainly never like this. The only other time he had really fallen through the air was when a cliff had crumbled out from underneath him after fending off a vicious pack of dogs, and that had barely lasted long enough for him to even remember it at all.

But this was something very different, and much scarier: plummeting down through a narrow, pitch-black void that just kept going and going with no sign of ending...

_Hang on, what...?_ he suddenly thought. Even though the air rushing across his fur had not changed direction, it seemed like Bambi's sense of direction had just flipped; he now felt like he was going _up_ instead of down, despite continuing to travel in a straight path. Before he could even try to think about how that was possible, a circle of light greeted him as he reached the end of the tube. His momentum relented as he came back out into the open, letting him land next to the yellow pipe. Never had the feeling of solid ground under his hooves been such a huge relief.

But then he took a look at his surroundings, and that relieved feeling largely vanished. There was not a single tree or bush to hide behind within his sight; just wide, grassy, gently curving plains sparsely dotted by small cliffs and some _very_ oddly shaped and colored land formations far in the distance, rising straight up from the ground and rounding out perfectly at the tops. It was as if he was in the middle of the biggest meadow ever, and it made the small fawn feel way too exposed and vulnerable. He wanted to run to safety so badly, but what safety was there to run to?

He jumped as an unfamiliar sound reached his ears, seeming to come from the Warp Pipe, just before Matt shot up out of it and landed on the ground next to him. Seeing him alleviated some of Bambi's anxiety; at least he had someone with him who knew this unfamiliar, frighteningly spacious place.

"You okay?" Matt asked, sounding almost like he was expecting the Young Prince to be a nervous wreck.

"Uh, yeah," Bambi answered in a shaky voice, not sure how true his answer actually was.

"I was kinda freaked out the first time I traveled through a Warp Pipe, too," said Matt. "But you get used to it after enough trips through 'em."

"Oh, it's not that...at least, not anymore," Bambi said, giving another skittish glance to the wide-open expanse around them. "It's just...there isn't anything to hide us here."

"Ah," mused Matt understandingly. "Yeah, this isn't a very tree-ful section of the kingdom....Maybe you'll feel better once we reach Princess Peach's Castle. C'mon, it's this way."

He started joggling across the field (or at least that's the word Bambi thought he remembered Matt using to describe Man's version of trotting), and the small fawn followed close behind. There was little else around them apart from some yellowish-brown and yellow-with-white-squiggles things floating above their heads sprinkled here and there, but still, Bambi found himself tensely glancing side-to-side for something, anything, that might want to hurt him.

He was in the midst of one of these scans and not watching where he was going when he felt himself bump into something. He jumped in fright and would have started running for his life had he not taken a moment to realize that it was just Matt, standing and watching him.

"You still seem kind of jittery," he remarked.

"Well, like I said, there's nothing to hide me," Bambi repeated. "How do you Mans keep yourselves protected in a place like this?"

"Well...we don't really have to," Matt said.

"Wait, so you don't have any danger here?" asked Bambi in amazement.

"Oh no, we have dangers that we need to guard against, but they're all very direct and straightforward, which makes them fairly easy to deal with since they practically announce themselves whenever they're encountered," Matt clarified. "Here, we're more often than not required to either confront threats head-on or avoid them from the get-go rather than run and hide after getting discovered."

_Oh buck, what did I just get myself into?_ thought Bambi in alarm. This whole thing was shaping up to be a situation that sounded like it would require him to go against everything that his mother and father had taught him throughout his life. Go somewhere with absolutely no place to hide? Stay out in the open for a long time? Fight _before_ fleeing? Only someone with a death wish would do things like that!

"So, uh..." he managed to pipe up, "Are we there yet?"

"Almost. In fact, you can see the top tower already." Matt pointed to the summit of the hill they were traversing, and Bambi noticed that something was standing on the other side, rising above and overlooking the hill. It seemed a lot like the other colorful, spotted mountains that were scattered around the land in the distance, but this one was definitely very different from them. It looked as though it were a huge grey stone, with a dark brown, pointy peak made of some other material on top of which something that the fawn could only describe as a really big leaf was blowing gently in the breeze.

"That's the Princess Peach's Castle you were talking about?"

"Yep," Matt replied. "Well, part of the central tower, anyway. The castle itself is nestled in a little valley just on the other side of this hill. That's why I think you might feel a bit safer once we're down there; it's not as massively flat and expansive as the land behind us."

The duo finally reached the top of the hill, and Bambi took a look down below them. The tall, grey, stone mountain he had seen before was actually sitting on top of another mountain that was similarly colored and shaped except that it was wider, able to accommodate its smaller counterpart on top while still having a good amount of area all around it for the rest of its dark slanted top. Below that, however, was a third mountain with a vastly different shape, extending out a significant distance to the left and right but not forward or backwards, and having a smaller mountain more like the central one at each of its four corners.

"That's it? That weird cluster of little mountains?" Bambi remarked.

"If by 'weird cluster of little mountains' you mean 'collection of grey tall things with pointy red tops', then yes, that's Princess Peach's Castle," Matt said with an amused smirk. "Majestic, isn't it?"

"It's, uh, really..." Bambi was having a hard time finding a word to describe the object before him; it just looked so unnatural. "...Wait a moment, 'red'? What's 'red'?"

"...The color of the castle tops," said Matt, confused.

"No, that's a really dark brown!" Bambi protested. "It's the same color as the cliffs around us!"

"What are you talking—!?" Matt looked incredulously at the Young Prince, before seeming to suddenly realize something. "Oh, wait, I know what's going on here."

"What?" asked Bambi, not having a clue why they were disagreeing on something as objective as color.

"I'll explain later. Just follow me for now; all we're currently doing is wasting time."

Bambi stayed close to his guide as he headed off the right, following a path around the castle and staying out of the valley it was in. A few seconds later, the duo came to the edge of a minor gorge through which a river was flowing. It poured over the edge of one of the many small cliffs strewn around the area and cascaded down in a short waterfall to its landing spot right next to the castle, where the water seemed to pool around its base. Joined to it via a small river-width gap in the ground was a large lake in front of and off to the other side of the castle, curving gently around the larger, steeper cliffs on that side of the valley as it extended further into the distance.

"Up for a waterfall jump?" asked Matt. "Or would you rather just jump across the river?"

"Jump the river," Bambi answered so quickly that he nearly cut Matt off. "I'm not ready to go down another waterfall."

"Even though it's been two years since we did that?" Matt said, sporting a sly grin that matched his voice tone. "...Heh, just kidding. Not even _I_ would do that again unless I had to."

All it took was a few steps backwards and a running start, and Matt and Bambi were on the other side of the river. It was then that Matt turned and started heading down into the valley. Bambi followed as the two set hoof and foot on the dirt path covering a good portion of the basin that was not already underwater. Looking around at the hills that surrounded him, Bambi had to admit, he _did_ feel a little more safe and sheltered, although he still wished he had the cover of the forest instead of just a grassy valley with only three or four trees, a river and lake, and that large, grey-and-brown castle thing.

The young fawn studied that last item as he and Matt began to walk to it. It was truly unlike anything he had ever seen before. In particular, he could not take his eyes off of the vibrant assortment of blue, yellow, white, and light grey embedded on the front of the castle's main mountain, just below the central tower. It appeared to depict a Man, or as Matt called his own kind, a "hue-Man", but it was very flat and lacking in detail, almost as if it could have originally been something that Thumper had scrawled out in the dirt. Being a self-proclaimed born storyteller, his best friend occasionally liked to make drawings in the forest soil to help convey whatever he was talking about at that moment, none of which were ever as good as the real things they were meant to depict, the single-color palette of the ground notwithstanding.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by a foreboding _"Oh, no"_. Bambi looked at Matt and then where the Defender himself was looking, at an arch-shaped opening inside a small alcove carved into the castle below the colorful drawing that he had been marveling at. Several creatures that he had never seen before were standing or moving around by that spot.

"Is something wrong?" the fawn asked worriedly, seeing that the new, unfamiliar beasts did not look too friendly.

"I was wondering where everyone was, but they've already occupied the castle!" exclaimed Matt just as worriedly. "I eliminated the need for them to fight their way in when I destroyed the castle doors with my racing kart!"

"So...something _is_ wrong," Bambi reiterated.

"Oh yeah, and we need to make it right, fast! They might already have Princess Peach by now!"

Matt broke out into a full-speed trot towards a grey stone path that stretched over the water from the edge of the field to the castle opening. Bambi followed, but only as far as the river, staying on his side of the water as Matt crossed over to meet the odd-looking animals.

"Hey, it's Matt!" shouted what looked like a large, dull brown, walking mushroom with eyes and a mouth as it noticed the incoming Man. "Let's get—!"

The sentient mushroom was cut off by Matt rushing forward and sending it flying through the air, over the stone crossing, and into the river with a well-timed kick. A couple more of the mushroom creatures inside the castle began to run towards him, alerted by their now-fallen ally's call, but Matt dealt them the same watery fate just as quickly. Bambi stayed where he was as Matt turned back around to face him.

"Come on in!" said the Defender encouragingly. "Trust me, no one in here is that much harder to defeat than these Goombas that just went for a swim."

"No, I-I really don't think I'm the one you should be relying on to do this kind of thing," said the Young Prince uneasily.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous. You're fast, nimble, and can be taken out in one or two good hits, right?" Matt retorted.

"...Yeah—"

"You're perfect!"

Bambi continued to stay put while staring apprehensively into the castle. Regardless of how safe Matt said it was, there was still way too many of those belligerent-looking beasts mulling about for his taste, not to mention how many things about them were just plain _wrong._ Walking, talking, fanged mushrooms that were big enough to brush the fur on his underbelly, and yellow turtles that were as tall as him because of moving on their hind legs like Matt. In what place were things like that natural?

His ears took notice of a sound that he had never heard until earlier today: like a bird flapping its wings, but at a much faster pace and using much bigger wings. Looking behind him, Bambi spotted two huge yellow-brown things just like the one he had seen with Matt in the South Meadow, slowly moving through the sky in their direction.

"Ah, nuts," groaned Matt, coming back over the river to Bambi. "They've got airships coming with reinforcements."

The pair of "airships" slowed to a hovering position over the field in front of the castle, and several creatures began to jump down from them onto the ground. These were the type of opponent that Bambi had seen Matt previously fighting against back in the forest: turtles that looked very much like the ones currently inside the castle except for being a little taller, having smaller beaks, and holding what appeared to be a black stone on the end of a stick.

"Really strong reinforcements," Matt muttered. "Those are Hammer Bros, and they can be a real pain to deal with, especially in groups of more than two."

"Can I go home now?" asked Bambi. He could not remember the last time he was this uncomfortable in a location; it felt like the land itself was out to get him.

"Relax, I have your back. Nothing bad is going to happen to you," said Matt, moments before the Hammer Bros. began to throw their stones-on-sticks at the pair, who jumped backwards to the middle of the stone overpass to escape getting hit.

"Although right now, I think I need someone to have _my_ back..." Matt murmured as the Hammer Bros. advanced on the castle, a sentence that didn't exactly help to ease Bambi's worries.

"Hey, Hammer Bros!" shouted a voice. Bambi looked up just in time to see something jump off of the top of the castle, soar over his head, and strike one of the Hammer Bros, taking it out instantly. Following right behind was a dull light-blue shell with wings, swooping down from the same position and slamming into a second Hammer Bro, also defeating it in one hit.

"...They'll do," said Matt with a small smirk. Bambi took a closer look at the duo as they began fighting the crowd of Hammer Bros. The winged blue shell had sprouted limbs and a head to reveal a turtle whose head, unlike the other turtles, was mostly brown, while the other fighter was one of the huge "Goomba" mushrooms, but was a much lighter brown in addition to having only one fang and a long bushel of yellow fur whipping around behind it.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"Two of the few Goombas and Paratroopas that actually fight _for_ us instead of against us," Matt replied.

"Go and help Mario and Yoshi, Matt!" shouted the flying turtle. "Goombella and I'll handle these guys!"

"Okay, Parakarry, but don't do anything overly crazy or stupid! Leave that stuff to me!" Matt called back before turning around. "Come on, Bambi; it's really not that bad inside the castle hall right now."

Bambi hesitated, still unsure of what was waiting for him, but with a glance back at the group of Hammer Bros. blocking his only path of escape, he finally let out a sigh and slowly followed Matt into the huge structure.

"Okay, first, a quick bit of Koopa Troop 101," said Matt once they were inside and looking over the horde of uncanny creatures, pointing them out as he talked. "The big brown mushrooms with fangs are called Goombas, and the yellow turtles are called Koopa Troopas. Both can be dealt with in a single stomp from above. Watch."

Matt immediately ran for a nearby pair of the two creatures, landing on top of the Goomba and bouncing off of it onto the Koopa Troopa, leaving the former flattened on the ground and making the latter retract its arms, legs, and head inside of its shell. Bambi stared at the two felled beasts, astonished at how easily they had been defeated.

"...That's it?"

"That's it!" answered Matt. "I told you, these guys are really easy to take care of."

"Wow, okay," said Bambi, feeling considerably more at ease. It looked like these creatures were going to be fawn's play compared to some of the other perils he had faced in the past.

"As you can see, however," Matt continued, pointing at the motionless shell, "a Koopa Troopa will usually hide in its shell if you stomp it, and it'll eventually come back out and start moving again if you leave it alone for long enough. So what we like to do to prevent that...is this!"

He gave the shell a hard kick, and it went spinning off towards another Koopa Troopa and two Goombas, sending all three flying. It bounced off a wall and came hurtling back at Matt, who jumped on it again to stop it.

"A kicked Koopa shell will knock almost anyone out completely, including other Koopas, as well as yourself," he finished. "So you need to make sure the shell doesn't bounce back and hit you; these things can hurt pretty bad."

"Oh, like what happened to you back in the South Meadow?"

"...Yeah, like that. That's what you _don't_ want to happen."

"OW, HEY! That was totally NOT cool!" shouted a female voice. Bambi and Matt looked behind them and saw Goombella and Parakarry just outside the castle entrance, struggling in vain to not be slowly pushed back further and further by the Hammer Bros. outside.

"They can't keep those Hammer Bros. out much longer; we should clean this place up a little before they really make a mess of things in here," said Matt. "You take your side of the hall, I'll take my side! We need to take down every Goomba and Koopa in here!"

_Okay, then..._ Bambi nodded as he looked over the cavern one last time. Surprisingly, almost all of the foes he saw were still idly wandering around, as if he wasn't even there. He cautiously approached a nearby Goomba, who jumped upon spotting the deer before running straight for him, a menacing glare on its face. Despite his lingering uneasiness with how threatening these creatures could make themselves look, Bambi tentatively reared up on his hind legs and brought his front hooves down onto the Goomba just as it reached him, and even though he had not put much more force beyond his own falling body weight into the attack, the mushroom creature instantly flattened on the ground.

"...Okay, then!" he said to himself with a small grin, feeling more confident every moment. He started moving through his half of the castle interior, taking care of the Goombas one at a time. He dodged the Koopa Troopas that saw him for the time being, wanting to make sure he felt comfortable enough with dispelling this foe before moving on to another.

* * *

Matt kept an eye on Bambi as he continued dispatching every Goomba and Koopa in his side of the room. The Young Prince finally seemed to be getting comfortable with the Mushroom Kingdom's troublemakers.

_Before, he was simply using his forehooves; now he's using his _four_ hooves,_ he thought jokingly to himself, seeing that Bambi was now, with increasing fluidity, legitimately jumping and stomping his opponents just like how Matt and the other Defenders did instead of the jerky "run-up, hoof-pound, run-up, hoof-pound" that he had started out with.

"See? You're a natural!" he said with a grin after Bambi had flattened the last Goomba in the room.

"Sorry I've been so slow," said the fawn.

"Oh no, don't be," Matt quickly replied. "This is your first time seeing...well, _everything_ we've come across here, and I'm sure you've been struggling with the urge to run away quite a bit. You've been a real good help, and I'm glad you agreed to come."

He hoped in his head that he sounded supportive and encouraging enough. The truth was, he was a little frustrated with how excruciatingly slow Bambi's comfort and confidence in battling the Koopa Troop was amassing, particularly since he still had yet to confirm that Princess Peach was okay and the Hammer Bros. that Goombella and Parakarry were fending off would likely be breaking through them in a few moments, but he didn't want to say or do anything that would potentially drive Bambi off.

_It's only this one time,_ he reminded himself. _Once he gets used to it, he'll be just as good as any of us._

He watched Bambi stomp a Koopa Troopa before turning and giving the shell a hard buck with his back legs. The projectile shot across the hall straight into another Koopa before bouncing off the wall and striking a second.

"He's actually got pretty good aim for a newcomer," Matt said to himself, jumping on the shell as it came towards him to stop it. His eyes drifted over to Goombella and Parakarry, now on the verge of failing and letting the wave of Hammer Bros. flood the castle, and then an idea suddenly popped into his head.

_I should have thought of this much sooner!_

"Goombella! Parakarry! Make way, quick!" Matt yelled before kicking the Koopa shell at his feet right at them. The Goomba and Paratroopa had just enough time to look behind them and leap away before the shell crashed into their opponents. With how closely packed the Hammer Bros. were at the entrance and on the bridge, Matt knew that that one attack would have to have taken out at least a third of the group.

"Bambi, start kicking shells at the Hammer Bros. like I just did!" he shouted to the fawn, who had stopped to watch the greater scene after hearing Matt's abrupt order. Bambi hesitated, but just as the Koopa Troop soldiers that were still standing began to file into the hall, he bounded over to another nearby Koopa, stomped it, and sent it at them, managing to take out the rest of the Hammer Bros. that were still bunched together, leaving only five to contend with in the hall.

"Thanks, Mister Deer!" said Goombella to Bambi. "This load of loons just got WAY more manageable! Let's waste 'em, and their hammers, too!"

"Wait, what's a hammer?" asked Bambi as the Hammer Bros. began hurling them at Matt, Goombella, and Parakarry. "Those stones on sticks they keep throwing?"

"Uh-huh!" Matt focused on the Hammer Bro directly in front of him, jumping from side to side to evade its namesake weapons while waiting for the right time to counterattack; in addition to their hammer-throwing, Hammer Bros. also liked to jump around a lot, almost as much as Mario, in fact, and Matt knew that could easily cost him if a Bro jumped at just the right (or wrong) time and landed on him.

As he expected, his opponent decided to take a vertical leap into the air, throwing another hammer right at the apex of the jump. Instantly, Matt saw an opening, and he took it. He ran and jumped as the Hammer Bro came back down to Earth, landing on and felling it before it could draw another hammer.

"When will they learn that throwing a hammer at the peak of a jump always leaves them open until they touch down again at the _least?_ " he thought. "...Actually, I hope they _never_ learn that; if they did, they'd be much more of a pain in the rear."

He looked around, checking on the others. Parakarry had just used his Shell Shot attack to great effect on one of the other Hammer Bros, and Goombella had another at the mercy of her Multibonk. Bambi, however, was running from an onslaught that was being mounted against him by the two remaining Bros.

_Oh dear, can't have that, now can we?_ he thought, moving to cut the trio off and punching the nearest Hammer Bro in the face as soon as it was within reach. The other Hammer Bro skidded to a stop and moved to engage him, but Matt prevented him from enacting any retaliation via grabbing him by the shoulders, whirling around, and slamming him face-first into the castle wall. With Bambi's pursuers down, Matt glanced across the hall just in time to see Goombella and Parakarry finish off their own opponents.

"Wow, those were a lot scarier than the Goombas and Koopa Troopas," Bambi remarked as the four came together in the center of the room.

"Yeah, Hammer Bros. are a big, _big_ step up from Goombas and Koopas," said Matt. "They're considered the most elite fighters of the Koopa Troop, which, before I forget to tell you, is the name of the bad group all these baddies belong to."

"Although I have to ask: how do they manage to keep and carry that many hammers with them?" Bambi asked incredulously.

"We've wondered that, too," replied Parakarry. "But apparently it's a trade secret."

"A _what?_ "

"Trade secret," Matt explained. "Meaning it's something that only the Hammer Bros. know and they go to great lengths to keep any non-Hammer Bros. from finding out."

"Oh," said Bambi. "So, what's next now that we've cleared this place out?"

"We head up to the next room of the castle and clear that out!" Goombella answered, just before a crash came from outside, followed by a very familiar "HELP ME!"

"As Defender, I'm going to change that plan: we go back outside and see what's going on out there instead," Matt stated very flatly before heading for the castle entrance. The others followed him back outside and across the moat bridge, now shrouded by the shadow of the two airships idling outside, which had moved lower and closer to the castle. Another "HELP ME!" rang out through the air as Matt stopped on the other side of the moat to plan his next move.

"Who's calling for help?" Bambi wondered.

"Our princess, Peach," Goombella said.

"Your princess is a _peach?_ " exclaimed Bambi. "Exactly what kind of crazy place do you live in!?"

"Nononononono, our princess's name is 'Peach'!" clarified Matt. "And judging by how close these ships are to the balcony, if she's not already on board one of them, she's gonna be real soon."

"Heh, hehehe!" A childish giggle made Matt look back up at the balcony just in time to see a small, stout Koopa run out onto it and jump to the deck of the airship nearest to him. This Koopa had a much bigger snout than the others, along with a spike-adorned shell, metal cuffs on his wrists, and a handkerchief with a crudely drawn set of sharp teeth tied around his neck.

_Bowser Jr; shoulda known,_ Matt thought as two more familiar faces came into view from inside the castle. One was a human dressed in blue overalls, white gloves, and a red shirt along with a matching red cap and a large mustache, while the other was a green reptilian creature with a white underside, three big scales on the back of its head, a seat on its back, and a huge nose.

"You're not stopping me this time, Mario!" gloated Bowser Jr. as the airship and its partner began to move. The mustachioed human began to make a move to jump on the vessel, but his adversary began throwing what amounted to black cartoon-like bombs with eyes, feet, and a windup key at him to keep him planted solidly on the balcony. Matt stared at the slowly departing ships, having no clue what to do and nearly ready to admit defeat, when a small square of light grey stone embedded in the ground a short distance away caught his eye.

_The cannon!_ he suddenly realized.

"Mario! Yoshi!" he shouted. "Throw some of those Bob-ombs down here to me, quick! I'll knock those ships outta the sky with the castle cannon!"

The human above gave an emphatic thumbs-up with an equally emphatic "Okey-dokey!" before he and the green reptile began tossing the walking explosives down onto the moat bridge. Matt managed to scoop up seven of them in his arms before running for the pad of rock, which had a hole in its center. He dropped all of the Bob-ombs he had down into it, and a large cannon rose up out of the hole, anchored between two blue slabs with a white "?" emblazoned on each of them.

The artillery swiveled to face the airships, now a good distance away from Princess Peach's Castle, but still in its front garden and well within the cannon's reach, and Matt adjusted the vertical trajectory of the weapon to aim for the gigantic propellers on the airships' masts that kept them afloat. He knew firsthand that if even one of those huge mast-mounted propellers, or "lift propellers" as he liked to refer to them, got destroyed or even damaged enough to cease working, that airship would, without exception, drop out of the sky and crash, usually within a couple of seconds. However, the Koopa Troop liked to build their airships tough. Tough enough that even putting a scratch on such vital components was not possible without a coordinated and decently powerful offense.

With that in mind, Matt fired the cannon, sending all seven Bob-ombs into the air at once, spreading out to cover a large area as they flew at the pair of airships. He had intended for each airship to take roughly the same amount of fire, but either his initial aim was off or the airships moved a little faster than he anticipated, because only two Bob-ombs hit the airship that Bowser Jr. was on, though they struck close enough to the base of its rear mast to visibly contort it and compromise the ship's airborne balance. The consequent lurch that threw Bowser Jr. into the air and left him hanging onto the edge of the deck for dear life was also quite satisfying to watch.

The other airship, however, was not as lucky. The remaining five Bob-ombs were a destructive volley in and of themselves, but with three of them hitting the front mast in different places and the remaining two scoring decisive nearby hits on the hull, the flying vessel almost instantly pitched downward before falling bow-first to the ground with an earth-vibrating _**CRASH!**_

"It's down!" Parakarry exclaimed, rushing to the wreck alongside Goombella, Bambi, and Matt while Mario and Yoshi jumped down from the balcony and ran after the remaining airship as it seemed to limp away out of sight, struggling to stay up in the air.

"Okay, let's see what went down with the airship," said Matt, jumping up on the deck. Parakarry flew up to join him while Goombella and Bambi stayed on the ground.

"...I see a weak spot over here," observed the flying mail carrier, pointing to a large crack in the deck's floorboard. "Do you think you can peel this board away?"

"Let's find out!" Matt crouched down, working his fingers into the crack to grip the damaged wood beam before attempting to uproot it from the floor. It took a couple of seconds, but eventually the beam snapped partway along its length, allowing Matt to completely remove a small piece and create a hole in the deck. He would have immediately jumped down into the airship were the opening big enough for him to fit through. However, before he could move to pull away more of the deck, someone else volunteered to go exploring.

"I'll go down inside and see what's in there," Parakarry said before disappearing down the hole himself. Matt knelt down by the gap, looking and listening for anything of note; however, the only thing he was getting was various faint moans and groans of pain. He ultimately found himself listening to the conversation that Goombella and Bambi were having down on the ground below.

"So now that we have some, like, legit downtime," said the she-Goomba, "I gotta know: who's Matt's latest battle ally?"

"...You mean me?" Bambi asked after a pause.

"No, the castle. Of course I mean you!" Goombella responded in a sarcastic but lighthearted voice.

"Oh," murmured the unsettled Young Prince. "Uh, my name's Bambi."

"Oh, so _you're_ Bambi!"

"You've heard of me?" Bambi said in surprise.

"Oh, totally! Matt talks about you every so often," Goombella explained. "Nice to finally meet the Young Prince of the Moonview Forest in person! I'm Goombella. Parakarry and I are old friends of Mario and Matt...or, at least of Mario."

"Mario...That Man who was up there and ran after that other, what did you call it, airship?" Bambi asked, gesturing to the castle balcony behind him with a nod of his head.

"Yeah, him."

"So then I guess the big brownish-yellow creature was Yoshi?"

"...Brownish-yellow?" Goombella asked. "What're you, colorblind? Yoshi's green!"

"Actually, he _is,_ " Matt called down to them as Bambi looked at the Goomba with the same expression he had when he and Matt had been arguing over the color of Princess Peach's Castle's roof. "All white-tailed deer are dichromatic; they can only see blues and yellows, which effectively makes them red-green colorblind. To Bambi, you're probably some shade of really light brown rather than the light pink you actually are."

Bambi nodded.

"I don't understand anything you guys are saying about these 'red', 'green', and 'pink' colors I've never heard of before, but he's right about you looking light brown to me," he said.

"Wow, really?" said Goombella. "Heh, eh, sorry about that, Bambi."

"I thought you were supposed to know these kinds of things," Matt commented.

"I'm an archæologist; I study stuff from the past, not the present!" Goombella retorted. "Where do you learn something like that, anyway?"

"It was part of a larger set of info I got from Russ T. during my research to find out more about white-tailed deer after first befriending Bambi," Matt answered. "I remember that particular tidbit really stuck in my head because he'd said their perception of color is virtually identical to that of someone who's red-green colorblind; specifically, a protanope."

"Huh," said Goombella to herself. "Well, there's the new thing I learned today. I gotta remember to look up 'protanope' the next time I have a dictionary handy."

"Find anything interesting yet, Parakarry?" Matt called into the airship, his attention now back on the Paratroopa's search inside the airship ruins.

"No princess; she must be on the other airship," Parakarry's voice responded. "I've got a lot of dazed minions that won't be a problem, but aside from that, there's nothing really import—Wait a minute!"

"What's up?"

"Why is Chikorita down here?"

_Chikorita!_ Matt had completely forgotten about losing her back in the Moonview Forest.

"Is she all right!?" he asked worriedly.

"...Well, given the situation, I'd say she's probably as all right as she could be," Parakarry answered as he reemerged from the hole in the deck. Chikorita was in his arms, looking a little shaken and banged up but not seriously hurt.

"Ow," she choked out, looking at her owner with a smirk. "Way to rescue me, Matt."

"I'm sorry," said Matt, taking the small Pokémon in his own arms. "Had I known you were in there, I wouldn't have been so aggressive in my attack on this thing. At least I have you back; that's one thing I don't need to worry about anymore."

"Why did you decide to use Bob-ombs in the first place instead of simply launching yourself out of the cannon?" asked Parakarry as the trio rejoined Goombella and Bambi on the ground.

"...Well, I guess I could have tried that, but as you know, I haven't really gotten aiming a cannon while inside it down like Mario or Yoshi have, and I didn't wanna wait for them to come over and aim for me," Matt replied. "Besides, a launch-and-board would've only allowed me one of the airships to do anything to; this way, I was also able to damage the other."

"...Well, I guess the question now becomes: What do we do with this destroyed airship?" Parakarry pondered, looking at the trashed craft.

" _I'm_ not gonna do anything with it," Matt replied. "I'm going after that other airship and rescuing the princess."

"You know she would probably want you cleaning up here rather than heading into danger like that," said Parakarry.

"But that's boring!" Matt groaned. "What's the point in designating me a Defender if nearly all I do is clean up after Bowser and the other Defenders, anyway?"

"IIIIIII think it's 'cause you have, like, a LOT less experience and probability of winning battles than Mario and Yoshi and she doesn't want you putting yourself in harm's way and getting totally in over your head?" said Goombella sardonically, knowing just as well as Matt both how often and why Princess Peach kept him out of the really perilous situations that the two much older and more skilled Defenders so often rushed into without so much as batting an eye.

"Yeah, well, I'm not gonna get any appreciable experience without being in harm's way," Matt huffed. "Besides, I still wanna teach Bambi here a little more about the kingdom before the day's done."

"I'm fine with that," said Bambi. "This place actually doesn't scare me too much anymore."

"Chikorita, are you okay to fight, too?" Matt asked.

"I think so," replied the small Grass-type, jumping out of Matt's arms onto the ground. "I'm still aching a little from that airship crash, but I'm just fine for the most part."

"Then as we Defenders love to say, _LET'S GO!_ " Matt proclaimed before leading Bambi and Chikorita on a charge in the direction that Mario, Yoshi, and the airship they were pursuing had gone.

"Once again, that unsociable, unpredictable human equivalent of a malfunctioning Kab-omb leaves us in the dust," Goombella snorted as the three disappeared over the ridge of the valley.

"I just hope he knows what he's doing, especially with a newcomer like Bambi in the mix who's only just starting to learn about our lifeforms and combat practices," thought Parakarry.


	3. 1-3: Stern Chase

_I can't believe that thing is still flying!_ Matt thought to himself. He was leading Bambi and Chikorita across one of the Mushroom Kingdom's fields on a course for a forest on the other side. The trio had managed to reacquire the damaged airship that had escaped the castle grounds, now floating over the woods that they were traveling to, and Matt was certain that his chronically kidnapped boss and ruler was on board.

"It looks like it's already made it pretty far over the forest," Chikorita observed as she ran alongside the others. "We'll probably need to trek pretty deep into the woods to reach it."

"Why do you sound so worried?" asked Matt. "I think you're forgetting that you have an expert in forest navigation running with you right now. And don't forget about me, either."

"I'm more concerned about getting lost on the way to our target," said the small Pokémon. "You know what the Mushroom Kingdom's forests are like..."

"This may not be the Moonview Forest, but it's not Forever Forest, either," Matt responded. "Those two are very different forests compared to what the kingdom usually hosts."

"Wait, 'different forests'?" wondered Bambi. "How can a forest be different from another? It's all trees and plants, right?"

"Well...not quite," said Matt. "This type of forest's trees and plants are a little different from yours. In fact, they're different enough that we don't even call it a forest; we call it a jungle instead."

The small group continued on their course. As they approached the jungle, its treetops began to slowly but surely crowd out their view of the distant airship, until it finally disappeared behind the canopy. A short distance later, Matt, Bambi, and Chikorita finally found themselves standing at the roots of the vast, thick cluster of trees.

"Ahhh, that's better," said Bambi with a smile and sigh of relief.

"Glad to be back in your element?" Matt asked.

"My _what?_ "

"...Okay, lemme rephrase that," said Matt with eyes closed, a finger raised, and head turned away as if telling someone to wait a second while he thought something through. "Glad to be back in a forested area like what you're familiar with?"

"Oh," Bambi replied. "Well, then yes, very much."

"Hold on, I thought you said you weren't scared of this place anymore," Chikorita said.

"I said I wasn't _too_ scared," Bambi corrected. "Honestly, spaces that are that open and free of trees really just don't feel right to me. I can be in them without completely freezing, but I never feel completely comfortable without the forest either around me or near enough to me that I can hide from danger really quick."

"The values of a deer," mused Matt. "...Well, we have an airship to find. Let's go save Princess Peach!"

With that proclamation, they set off into the woods. The humidity was rapidly intensifying as they made their way further in, and the temperature was starting to creep up as well. Matt and Bambi soon found themselves somewhat short of breath as the plants around them became increasingly iridescent, lush, and concentrated.

"Ugh, I hate humid environments like this," Matt said to himself, wiping his forehead as he forced his way through a bush. "If we need moisture in the air, snow is much more useful and bearable!"

"This kind of stickiness is what I expect during the summer!" panted Bambi, pausing to catch his breath after making the jump from a particularly thick cluster of plants and vines up to the top of a small nearby cliff. "Not during autumn!"

"Oh, c'mon, it's not that bad!" said Chikorita while throwing Razor Leaves at a branch blocking her path, the only one of the trio not slowed down by the climate change.

"Easy for you to say," snorted Matt. "You're made for this kind of environment."

"Mm, not really. I much rather prefer fields to forests."

As the group continued trudging through the thick undergrowth, they suddenly came upon a tiny clearing in the trees. In the middle of the clearing were two large blocks, both about a third of Matt's height, floating in the air some distance apart from each other. One appeared to be comprised of several smaller brown bricks held together with black mortar, while the other was bright yellow with a white "?" on each of its four sides.

"Hey, I remember those!" Bambi exclaimed. "They were floating all over the place in the huge meadow that Warp Pipe in my forest sent us to."

"Well, let's take a minute to get you properly acquainted, then, because these are some of the most common things in the kingdom," said Matt as he pointed to the brown block. "First, this guy; this is called a Brick Block. There's really not much to say about them except that most can be broken if you hit 'em hard enough. Watch."

He moved underneath the floating cube before jumping up and punching the bottom with his fist. The block instantly shattered into its individual bricks, which fell and scattered across the ground.

"Hitting it from below is generally the simplest way to go, but a sufficiently powerful blow to any side of a Brick Block will do the trick," he added.

"And...what exactly is the point of doing that?" Bambi asked slowly.

Matt didn't answer immediately, instead looking off into space and silently scrunching up his lips in thought for a few seconds.

"Well...one thing a lot of people here, including the other two Defenders, like to do is keep track of how many Brick Blocks they break," he explained. "It's part of some large, complicated point score game they like to play whenever they go out on an adventure. Almost every action they do successfully, be it items acquired, blocks hit or destroyed, foes defeated, all the way down to every second under a certain amount of time in which they travel a certain distance, is worth some arbitrary number of points depending on what the action exactly was, and at the end of the adventure, they tally up their score and see how high it is. I have no clue how they keep track of all of that, and besides, I really don't see the point, no pun intended, of that kind of thing myself. When it comes to Brick Blocks, I only like to punch them because sometimes, rather than just breaking, they actually contain something inside them that can be released by hitting it."

He turned to face the other block.

"Next up, the yellow one," he continued, indicating it with his hand. "This is called a ? Block. Now, before you ask what a '?' is, all you really need to know is that it's the white squiggly line and dot that's on each of the block's sides. ? Blocks _always_ contain something, and like Brick Blocks that do the same, they will release whatever they're holding if you hit 'em hard enough from any direction, although Brick Blocks usually tend to hold more valuable things than ? Blocks because they give no indication of whether or not they hold anything at all until you hit them, making the item-holding ones easier to overlook."

Matt ran over to the ? Block and punched it from below just like he had done to the Brick Block. The block appeared to jump in midair as a single Coin came out of the top, before instantly becoming a solid dark brown color as it fell back into its former position in the air.

"Whenever a ? Block or an object-holding Brick Block is hit and emptied of its contents, they turn this dull brown color and become virtually indestructible," he said, pointing to the block he had just hit. "Once this happens, we refer to it as a Used Block. A Used Block doesn't do anything, and in certain situations can even turn into a hazard, but the fact that it can't be destroyed easily also makes it good for taking cover behind, especially when you have several of them all together."

He walked back towards Bambi.

"There are several more types of blocks in the Mushroom Kingdom, but the ? Block, Brick Block, and Used Block are the three you'll see most often."

"Okay," said Bambi with a small smile. "Thanks for letting me know."

"I've got a lot more information about the Mushroom Kingdom I want you to know before we finish this up, but for now, we really should keep chasing that airship."

Matt turned and took three steps further into the forest before abruptly stopping. "...Aw, nuts," he muttered.

"What's wrong?" Bambi asked.

Chikorita shook her head. "You forgot which way we were going after that block lecture, didn't you?"

"Eee-yeah," said Matt, looking off into the distance.

"Can't you find Mario and Yoshi with your phone?" Chikorita suggested. "You said they went after that airship, too, right?"

"It doesn't work that way," Matt replied. "Yes, my smartphone can do that, but it's pretty much useless when you're the only one in the entire kingdom that you know owns and carries one! Every other phone I've seen here is one of Silph Co.'s videophones, and those are about as mobile as the buildings they're installed in....I think we'll just have to take a guess at which way to go. I know that airship can't be far..."

"Hmmm..." Chikorita let out an audible expression of contemplation as the trio scanned the forest, trying to decide on the direction to go off in. Bambi's head suddenly jerked around to the side, his eyes widened and his ears perked as if he had just heard something loud.

"This way!" he exclaimed, looking off into the woods. His teammates turned to the Young Prince in surprise.

"Why, what makes you so sure?" asked Chikorita.

"I felt something really big hit the ground over there. It's probably that airship!"

"You 'felt' it hit the ground?" said Matt. "Like, what, with your hooves?"

"Yeah, it's something my father taught me a long time ago, before I met you," Bambi said. "And it's come in handy a couple of times."

"Wow, that's really cool!" Chikorita remarked.

"...Okay, let's give that way a try," Matt said. "It's as good a route as any, and I don't think the land's gonna give us any other nudges. We should hurry, though; if that was in fact the airship crash-landing, they'll abandon it pretty quickly, and then we won't have anything to track them with."

He rushed off in the direction that Bambi had indicated, the young deer and Chikorita close behind him.

"What do you think we'll find ourselves up against, Matt?" Chikorita wondered.

"Well, I've noticed over the years that Bowser Jr. seems to have a penchant for mechanical stuff, particularly Bullet Bills and Bob-ombs, so that's what I'm expecting once we reach the ship," replied Matt. "But even before that, I fully expect that we'll see—"

He abandoned the rest of his sentence as a group of Koopa Troop soldiers came into view.

"...more of them," he finished, skidding to a stop along with Bambi and Chikorita. Much like at Princess Peach's Castle, the assembly before them consisted of Goombas and both green- and red-shelled Koopa Troopas; however, _unlike_ at the castle, several of all three types of minions were sporting large white pairs of feathery wings.

"Paragoombas and Paratroopas," Chikorita murmured to herself.

"Wait, now those Goombas and Koopa Troopas have _wings!?_ " Bambi exclaimed. "...I take it back, this place still scares me."

"Oh now, really, you don't need to be afraid," said Chikorita. "Flying versions of Goombas and Koopas aren't much harder than the grounded versions; they just need an extra stomp to take them out of the air, and then they'll go down just as fast as the wingless ones."

Bambi lagged behind Matt and Chikorita as they all advanced towards their opponents, who seemed as clueless to their presence as their comrades at Princess Peach's Castle. As the other two began to confront and conquer the little monsters, Bambi took a second to study the flying ones. Some of the Koopa Paratroopas were simply flying back and forth within a certain area, but the rest, along with all of the Paragoombas, were jumping erratically up and down as they moved about, a behavior that made the Young Prince feel uneasy. He trotted carefully towards the nearest Paragoomba and started to jump up for a stomp, but abruptly aborted the attack and scampered to the side when his opponent decided to jump as well. Bambi watched and waited for his enemy's next move, but much to his surprise, the Paragoomba continued on its way with not so much as a turn to look at him, flapping its wings before jumping again. 

_Can he even see me?_ the fawn wondered. Seeing a Koopa Paratroopa coming towards him on the same course, he decided to simply stay where he was and watch as the flying turtle bounced his way. Just like the Paragoomba, it sailed right by Bambi without trying to bother him at all.

_This just keeps getting weirder and weirder,_ he thought in bewilderment. _But if they won't attack me, I don't see why I need to do anything more than avoid them._

Doing just that with the remaining nearby enemies, sidestepping and leaping over them, he quickly found himself getting ahead of Chikorita and Matt, who were taking time to defeat the foes they were coming across. Watching the two, Bambi noticed a distinct difference in their fighting methods.

Chikorita was only dealing with what was in her way; if an enemy was off to the side or on a row of blocks above her, she left it alone and kept advancing. It was a very efficient process to get her through the wave of opponents.

Matt, however, was going out of his way to deliver a beatdown on every enemy he came near, leaving a stepping-stone path of flattened Goombas and retracted Koopa Troopas in his wake. Such behavior unnerved Bambi slightly and made him wonder what they did to make Matt so mad at them. Then again, Matt usually rivaled a recently awakened Friend Owl when it came to his mood, so maybe those critters didn't do much of anything at all beyond what Bambi had already seen them do.

He quickly hopped to one side so that a Goomba falling off of a row of Brick Blocks above him would not land on his head. He watched the brown mushroom continue to waddle on its way, when out of nowhere, a Koopa Troopa's shell raced in and struck it from the side, scaring Bambi out of his wits so much that he followed his felled acquaintance into the air with a leap to the top of the row of Brick Blocks that the Goomba had originally come down from. He saw the trail the shell had blazed on the ground below, which led right back to Matt's feet.

"Bambi, what're you doing?" he called out. "You're supposed to take these guys out like you did at the castle!"

"But they're not trying to hurt me!" Bambi protested. "Why should I bother them if they're not bothering me?"

"...Fine, I'll do it," growled Matt before running for the creatures that Bambi had glossed over. Stomp by stomp, kicked shell by kicked shell, he blew through the line with quick, surgical efficiency.

_Seems like an awful big waste of time and energy..._ he thought as Matt finished off the last of the group and then proceeded to go after the creatures that Chikorita had skipped.

"Matt, come on! You're just wasting time and energy!" said the small Pokémon in frustration, watching Matt with an annoyed grimace. Bambi opened his mouth, about to echo Chikorita with his thoughts, but right at that moment, he noticed something large and black streaking through the trees directly at them. It had two distinctive features: arms like Matt's, and large eyes that looked quite angry.

"Whoa, what's that!?" he exclaimed instead.

Chikorita glanced in the projectile's general direction, following up with a shocked double take after realizing just what it was.

"Matt!" she shouted. "Incoming Bullet Bill, behind you!"

The Defender turned around from facing a duo of Goombas just in time to see and execute a backflip to avoid the large missile.

"So what _was_ that?" Bambi repeated as the subject of their conversation continued on and disappeared back into the trees.

"That was a Bullet Bill," answered Chikorita as Matt turned back to the two Goombas to stomp them flat. "They're another pretty common foe in the Mushroom Kingdom."

"Thanks for the heads-up, Chikorita," Matt said to her after finishing up his enemy purge. "That could've been hairy. On the plus side, though, I'm now pretty sure Bambi was right about the airship being this way. If we weren't moving towards it, we wouldn't be encountering resistance like that."

"What resistance?" Chikorita replied with an amused smirk. "That Bullet Bill was the first thing in these woods to actively attack us."

"Yeah, why is that?" Bambi asked. "None of those guys even tried to attack us, and even the ones back at your Princess Peach's Castle only reacted when we were close enough to them. What's going on?"

"What's going on is that they're stupid," Matt scoffed. "Some of 'em wander around aimlessly, some of 'em will attack once they spot a target within a certain range, but _all_ of 'em are ridiculously dumb. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Goombas and Koopas just walk right off the ledges of cliffs or Bottomless Pits. And they wonder why they're stuck at such low positions in the Koopa Troop. Idiots."

"Koopas...Which ones, the Koopa Troopas or the Koopa Paratroopas?" said Bambi.

Matt looked at Bambi incredulously.

"Both, isn't it obv—?" he started before cutting himself off. "...Oh hang on, I haven't explained that to you yet, have I?"

Bambi tilted his head, puzzled.

"I'll do it now," Matt continued. "Even though their full names are 'Koopa Troopa' and 'Koopa Paratroopa', we rarely call them by those names in normal conversation. Usually, we just say 'Koopa' to refer to the wingless ones while specifically using 'Paratroopa' for the winged ones, although we also use 'Koopa' to refer to both of them in general, which is what I just did."

"...That seems kind of overly complicated," Bambi commented.

"Only because I'm the one who explained it," Matt said. "It's much more intuitive in practice."

He turned to look in the direction the Bullet Bill had come from.

"Speaking of Koopas and Paratroopas," he added, "I think we just reacquired our target. Check it out!"

Bambi jumped back down to the ground from his perch on the floating Brick Blocks as Matt ran past him and over to a nearby pair of trees. He and Chikorita made their way over to the trees as well, and were greeted by the sight of a wooden boat with a broken rear mast sitting on the ground, brown dots of trodden Goombas and the shells of withdrawn Koopas, both on their own and with mangled wings, littering the land around it.

"Nice job, Bambi! Your forest-feeling found our foe's airship for us!" Matt exclaimed. The firing of a Bullet Bill at them from one of the still-functioning cannons on the ship's side prevented him saying anything else as the trio quickly scurried out of its way, straight into the path of another one coming out of a neighboring cannon, much to their horror.

_**Oh, crap...**_ Matt panicked inside his head, bracing for a Bullet Bill straight to the face, but just then, a certain plumber leapt completely over the downed vessel from the opposite side and made a perfect two-foot touchdown on top of the huge piece of artillery, knocking it out of the air immediately.

"Phew!" Matt sighed in relief along with his friends as Mario landed back on the ground. "You have really got awesome timing, you know that?"

The mustachioed man gave him another emphatic thumbs-up, complete with a wink and "Heehee!" to go with it. Matt nodded, right as a new threat appeared from around the crashed airship.

"Watch out, Hammer Bro right behind you!" he shouted, pointing at the elite fighter just as it started charging at Mario and doing what its kind did best. Mario turned and quickly somersaulted out of the way of the flying hammers, while Matt simply jumped backwards from the impact zone before making ready to lunge forward and blast that Hammer Bro to Kingdom Come. However, he never got to carry his plan out thanks to a white egg with green spots flying through the air from behind him and shattering against his foe's helmet. Matt's head shot around to see another familiar face running for the stunned soldier.

"Hup! Brrroing- _HAH!_ " Yoshi jumped above his target before flipping once in midair and coming down bottom-first on him. The Hammer Bro let out a short wail of pain as it went flying into the hull of the airship lying nearby before flopping to the ground, out cold.

"You're not too bad, either!" Matt said to the green dinosaur. Chikorita and Bambi watched as they converged in a small circle alongside Mario.

"I thought you guys might need an extra hand, but I guess that's kinda like thinking the Mushroom Kingdom needs extra Koopa Troop," Matt said to Mario and Yoshi, who simultaneously jumped and backflipped twice in midair before striking a pose. Matt attempted to do the same, but only managed a single flip before landing and striking his own pose.

"...I think the double-backflip is still a little ways away for me," he said after a second or two of somewhat awkward silence. "And by 'little ways' I mean 'a mile and a half'."

The older Defenders chuckled, but Chikorita let out a full-out "Heh!", catching Mario's attention, before his eyes then shifted over to look at the deer standing quietly beside her.

"Oh?" he wondered as Yoshi's eyes fell on the increasingly nervous Bambi as well.

"Hm?" Matt turned his head to look at what they were interested in. "Oh! Guys, this is Bambi. He's a friend of mine who lives in the Moonview Forest."

The two older Defenders looked surprised.

"Yeah, that's right," Matt said, starting to sound a little defensive. "I _do_ have another friend besides Chikorita."

"Ohhh..." murmured Mario in astonishment, before turning and waving at Bambi with a smile. "Hello!"

"Wah-ho!" babbled Yoshi, smiling and waving at the Young Prince with the same level of enthusiasm as Mario.

"...Hi." Bambi somewhat hesitantly reciprocated the greeting.

"Bambi, this is Mario and Yoshi, the other two Mushroom Kingdom Defenders I told you about," said Matt.

"I know, I saw them with you back at Princess Peach's Castle," Bambi replied, trying not to sound as anxious as he felt under the scrutiny of an unfamiliar human face.

"Don't be scared," Matt said. "If you can tolerate me, you'll have no problem with these two."

He turned back to face Mario and Yoshi.

"So it looks like you two've already taken out much of this ship's crew," he said to his comrades, who nodded. "...Darn, I wanted to kick a few butts out here, too."

"Wai—Isn't that all you did on the way here?" Bambi asked incredulously.

"...Yeah, so?" Matt responded, looking at Bambi in confusion.

"I know these creatures aren't the friendliest, but don't you think you've doled out enough hurt by now?"

"No way," said Matt bluntly. "Besides, that kind of thing is a fundamental part of the Defender job."

He turned back to Mario and Yoshi.

"Any sign of Bowser Jr. or Princess Peach?"

His allies shook their heads.

"None at _all!?_ " Matt exclaimed. "Hmmm...Well, if he hasn't already left, he has to be either stuck inside the airship, or looking around in there for something he wants to take with him...in addition to the Princess. Either way, we should get in there before he gets _out_ of there."

The other two Defenders nodded before all five adventurers turned and began looking the crashed airship over. Matt suddenly noticed something about the hull and began inspecting a small area of it more closely.

"...Hey Mario, you wouldn't happen to have a hammer, would you?" he asked after a few seconds. Looking up, he saw Mario holding out a sledgehammer to him, much larger than anything the Hammer Bros. utilized.

"Thank you," he said, taking the weapon in his hands with a malevolent grin that made Bambi take a step backwards. Moments later, Chikorita, Mario, and Yoshi all jumped back as well after Matt leveled a huge backswing and proceeded to smash the airship's hull not once, not twice, but seven times in the spot he was interested in. The wooden boards cracked and split with every hit until they finally shattered, leaving a large hole in the ship's exterior.

"Bowser Jr! I know you're in there!" Matt called into the ship.

"You're certainly a persistent little imp, aren't you!?" the young Koopa's childish voice called back.

"You're one to talk," said Matt. "Look, we've managed to catch up to and back you into a corner a lot quicker than usual this time around. Your airship's down, your troops are down, and I bet any backup-calling method you might have is down as well. It's only a matter of time before we take _you_ down. Why don't you quit while you're ahead and give Princess Peach back to us now? Otherwise, we'll have to hand you your own rear end again, which quite frankly is a lot of unnecessary pain for you and a lot of unnecessarily spent energy for us."

For a second or two, there was no response. Then, out of the blue, there was a _POOF!_ as a big fireball hit Matt in the face, engulfing him in red and orange from the chest up. He stumbled backwards from the impact before falling over, covered in soot, and Bowser Jr. burst out of the ship, dragging Princess Peach behind him.

"There's no way I'm surrendering to the likes of you!" he proclaimed before taking off for the woods.

"Come back!" exclaimed Mario as he and Yoshi gave chase.

"You can't shake me that easily!" Matt shouted while rapidly picking himself up, shaking off the ashes, and following right on their heels, with Chikorita and Bambi close behind on his own heels. Trees and bushes alternately revealed and hid their target as they ran through the jungle.

"Let's spread out and surround him!" Matt suggested.

"Yahoo!" Mario promptly veered off to the right with one of his trademark jumps and cries. Yoshi curved to the left, while Matt and his friends continued their direct pursuit. Bambi let out an unhappy sigh.

"This is _not_ what I had in mind when I heard Matt say 'adventure'," he said to himself.

"I take it you're not enjoying your first bout in the Mushroom Kingdom?" Chikorita asked with a saucy smile as she ran alongside the fawn. "I'll be honest, though: I'm surprised you've stuck it out for as long as you have."

"Well, I had to; you and Matt are my only guides back to my home."

"Heh, guess you're right," mused the Leaf Pokémon.

"Speaking of Matt," Bambi suddenly commented, "what happened to him?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, he's never been in a really good mood, but at least he'd also try to be something approaching friendly and compassionate," said Bambi. "But that hasn't shown up even once since we left my forest. I almost feel like I'm seeing someone completely new and different."

"Well, given that this is the first time you're seeing him interact with anyone outside of your forest besides me, you kind of are," Chikorita answered. "I see him like this all the time; friendliness and compassion are two things he's pretty stingy with. As in 'he saves almost all of it for the two of us'. Anyone else would be lucky just to get common courtesy and politeness out of him like Mario and Yoshi."

"Well, I don't like it," said Bambi firmly. "Seeing him enjoy stuff like this makes me shudder. Especially all those dead Goombas and Paragoombas, and broken Koopa Paratroopa's wings...you shouldn't take pleasure in inflicting that kind of violence and pain."

"Oh, you needn't worry about them," said Chikorita reassuringly. "Flattening Goombas doesn't kill them, it just immobilizes them for a while. Eventually they'll pop right back up and be none the worse for wear...aside from the occasional headache. Same with Paratroopas; their wings always recover after some time with little more to show for it than some soreness. Paragoombas, too."

Bambi was silent as they continued to race through the woods following Matt and Bowser Jr.

"...You're definitely right about Matt enjoying handing out hurt too much, though," Chikorita added. "When it comes to battles, he can be downright _brutal._ Though I think that has more to do with his mood than actually relishing harming others. 'Cause let's face it: you tend not to show as much mercy when you're mad."

"...So what's he so mad about?"

"That's...one of the great mysteries of life," said Chikorita. "...Or perhaps more accurately, _he's_ one of the great mysteries of life."

They kept on their course, following Matt as he followed Bowser Jr, who had just disappeared into a large bush. As Matt approached, however, Bowser Jr. suddenly jumped back out of it, charging straight back at his opponent, a large paintbrush in the claw that wasn't holding Princess Peach. He swung the brush and a swath of a black and white paint-like substance was thrown from its tip directly at Matt, who put on the brakes so hard in response that he lost his balance. His momentum sent him flying forward onto his stomach as the muck streak sailed over him, striking Bambi instead and splattering all over his face and fur. The fawn screamed as the slime stung his eyes, staggering off to one side and allowing Bowser Jr. a clear path past him.

"Bambi!" exclaimed Chikorita in shock, quickly extending her Vine Whips out for Bambi to lean on as Bowser Jr. kept going on his way. Bambi ultimately managed to stay on his hooves without Chikorita's help, though he continued to reel and flail violently with his eyes screwed shut as Matt jumped back up and ran over to them.

"Easy, easy!" he urged Bambi. "Calm down and hold still so I can get that stuff off you!"

It took a few more seconds before the Young Prince finally got himself under control. By that time, Mario and Yoshi had converged back on the trio as well, alerted by Bambi's cries of pain.

"Thank Arceus his dad wasn't around to see _that,_ " murmured Matt, kneeling down and looking his graffitied friend over. "...Mario, Yoshi, either of you got a cloth?"

He looked over at the other two Defenders to see Yoshi already holding out a white handkerchief.

"...Where'd _you_ get a handkerchief?" he asked, having expected Mario to be the one holding the item.

"Really?" said Chikorita, unimpressed. "You're asking _that_ right now?"

"You're right, you're right," replied Matt, taking the cloth and turning back to Bambi. Gently and carefully, he wiped the sticky sludge off of Bambi's face. Slowly, his friend opened his eyes again.

"You all right?" Matt asked.

"I...think so," said Bambi, blinking his eyes a few times before looking himself, an anxious look on his face. "But what about the rest of this...this...?"

"Oh, don't worry too much about it," said Matt. "A quick dip in water, and it'll wash right out. Can only imagine what that stuff does when it hits something other than skin, though."

"It hurts you," said Bambi brusquely. Matt simply gave a small nod.

"So which way did Jr. go?" wondered Chikorita, looking around her along with Yoshi and Mario.

"...Yoshi!" the green dinosaur suddenly exclaimed, pointing a short distance away. Everyone else turned to look at the traces of black and white mire on the grass. Going over for a closer look, the group saw the splotches dot out a path leading further into the woods.

"Like leaving mud tracks," said Matt with a devious smirk.

"Let's-a-go!" proclaimed Mario before darting off again, Yoshi, Matt, Chikorita, and Bambi following hastily behind. The graffiti curved back and forth through the forest for a short distance before stopping just short of a small clearing with two Warp Pipes, one green and one red, planted in the center.

"He probably took Princess Peach down one of those pipes," Matt commented.

"Question is, which one?" wondered Chikorita. "Can your Warp Pipe app tell us where they go?"

Matt already had his smartphone out and was looking at the screen.

"...Nope, neither of these pipes are on it," he said, prompting a surprised look from everyone except Bambi. "...Hey, this is a new thing; it's far from documenting every Warp Pipe in the kingdom. We need to add new pipes as we discover them, which I'm gonna do with these two right now."

"So which pipe do we use?" asked Bambi as Matt tapped on his phone's screen. Mario and Yoshi glanced at each other before wordlessly running for and jumping into the green one.

"...Guess we'll take the other," said Matt after staring at the pipe for a few seconds.

"Wait, we're not following them?" wondered Chikorita.

"Why did they choose that one, anyway?" asked Bambi.

"It's because red pipes—though I know they're both yellow to your eyes—usually lead to secret areas," Matt said. "And when a pipe goes to a secret area, it's most often either a dead end or it has only one other pipe that dumps you very close to where you came in from. Neither scenario would grant Bowser Jr. much progress in his escape, so it's likely he took the green pipe instead."

"Then why would we waste our time going to some 'secret area'?" asked Bambi.

"To be thorough," Matt replied. "Red Warp Pipes don't always go to a secret area, and Jr. may very well have taken this one instead of the green if it actually goes somewhere and he knew it. And even if that's not the case, secret areas can hold some pretty valuable items. We can stock up a bit before following Mario and Yoshi."

"Good enough for me," said Chikorita. "Let's head down!"

"Sadly, this will involve traveling through a dark pipe again," said Matt with an aside glance to Bambi, who gulped loudly.

"That's fine," he said nervously. "You said I'd get used to it if I do it enough times, right?"

Matt nodded and Bambi stepped up to the Warp Pipe, cautiously rearing up and putting his front hooves on its rim. He looked down into the blackness and let out a steeling exhale. However, just as he jumped completely up onto the edge of the pipe, one of his hooves slipped off and sent him tumbling over and down the metal tube.

"Well, that was...less than graceful," said Matt with a smirk.

"What did you expect?" Chikorita retorted. "That happened to me the first time I traveled a Warp Pipe, too. Claws and hooves aren't meant for metal."

"Technically speaking, this is his second trip through a Warp Pipe, Chikorita."

"Whatever, let's just get going," said the small Pokémon before she jumped up onto the rim of the Warp Pipe herself. Matt watched her take the plunge underground before diving in himself.


	4. 1-4: Dungeons & Deer

_"Ow,"_ snorted Matt, massaging his skull as he slowly stood back up from a sitting position on the ground. "That's the last time I go down a Warp Pipe headfirst!"

Bambi looked above Matt at the yellow pipe end protruding out from the ceiling. The small cavern really did not have much else to speak of; the walls, roof, and ground all consisted of dully-reflective blue stone with the occasional water film or droplet trickling slowly down from above. The air smelled musty, and there was not a lot of light, although the Young Prince could still see around him perfectly fine, unlike the complete blackout conditions within the Warp Pipes.

"So this is what a 'secret area' looks like?" he wondered, sounding distinctly unimpressed. "Doesn't seem like there's anything here."

"Oh no, goodness no," Chikorita quickly responded. "This cave is _way_ too drab to be a secret area. It's also too big; see how long it is?" 

She pointed, and Bambi looked, down towards the other end of the cavern. Several things stood between it and them. The most prominent was the floor suddenly making a sharp turn and extending partway up the cave's walls before leveling back out. A blue Warp Pipe could be seen rising up behind it, while a few blocks were scattered here and there on the ground. 

"This definitely leads somewhere," Chikorita said confidently. "Let's head deeper in."

The three adventurers began to walk through the cave, but they did not make it very far. They stopped short of the ground's abrupt altitude increase after seeing that it took a just-as-abrupt altitude decrease right before, going straight down to create one side of a very deep hole, deep enough that Bambi couldn't see the bottom. The equally sheer-faced side of the taller cliff in front of them ran downward in a parallel path, making up the abyss's opposite side.

"That's a..." Bambi paused while trying to think of a word. "...long way down."

"Bottomless Pits tend to be like that," Matt commented. "Now Bambi, you're a bright kid, so I'm sure I don't have to tell you this, but I'll say it nonetheless: You don't want to fall down these things."

"I figured," said Bambi while continuing to stare down into the chasm. He shifted his gaze up to the cliff ledge. "But then, how do we get up there?"

"We jump, of course!" said Matt. "No one can overstate how essential having a good jump is here. Pretty sure you can't even get through half the Mushroom Kingdom otherwise."

Bambi stood still, looking over the environment before him in silent uneasiness. He knew he was no slouch at jumping; he'd once made a point of showing his dad how far he could leap in a single bound. However, every one of his past big jumps had always had him land either at or below the height of where he started. He had never tried to land somewhere higher, and even though he would not need to jump very far horizontally (the Bottomless Pit was only about two or three blocks long), he wasn't sure if he was capable of mustering the vertical height the cliff required. And it was a long way to plummet if he missed the top of the ledge.

"Oh, hang on!" Matt exclaimed, snapping Bambi out of his thoughts. "Did you think I'd have _you_ try to make this jump before us?"

Bambi tried to think of an answer, but Matt didn't wait for one. "Nononononono, _I'm_ the one who's gonna try getting up there first."

"Are you sure?" said Chikorita. "That cliff's what, like, five blocks high? Even Mario can't jump that high without a good running start."

"So I'll get a good running start," said Matt, backing away from the edge of the Bottomless Pit. Bambi and Chikorita watched uneasily as he sprinted for the obstacle, vaulting into the air just before hitting the hole and sailing towards the ledge.

He hit the edge of the cliff with his chest. Desperately clawing the ground, he rapidly slid down until he was hanging on the edge by his hands. Bambi froze, nervously waiting for the moment when Matt would lose his grip and fall straight into the Bottomless Pit. The nervousness turned into outright dread when that moment actually came and he began slipping down the cliff's face. However, just before reaching the halfway point on the wall, Matt sprang off it and back across the pit towards Bambi and Chikorita, landing on the ground nearby. A couple of seconds passed as Bambi took a quiet breath to calm himself.

"...That was actually pretty good," complimented Chikorita, much to Bambi's complete shock and bafflement.

"I know; I think I actually managed to clear my own height on that jump," Matt thought. "If so, then that was roughly a four-block jump, which'd be a new personal best!"

"Excuse me, but you almost fell down that hole!" said Bambi incredulously. "That didn't scare either of you?"

"Oh, that? That happens all the time," said Matt dismissively. "Nothing a good Wall Jump can't get me out of."

Bambi continued to stare disconcertedly at Matt.

"You're making me question everything about you all over again, you know that?" he remarked. "Seriously, I've never seen you act so...whatever word means 'the opposite of peaceful'."

"This is what I'm like when I'm out and about doing my job as a Defender," said Matt. "I know, it's probably really jarring for you since I've only ever hung out with you in downtime mode before now. Hope you'll still be my friend."

Bambi could not help but smirk at the cheesy grin and cocked eyebrow that Matt gave him with that last sentence. Still, there was a strong sense of volatility about him, much stronger than Bambi would have preferred. Nothing would be more pleasing to the small fawn at this point than to get this adventure finished, go home and just have a relaxing meal grazing in the meadow or something similar.

"So..." he wondered, "If that cliff's too high to jump up to, how do we get up there?"

"The solution's right over here, Bambi," came Chikorita's voice. Bambi turned to look at the small leaf creature, expecting her to be pointing out something. But she wasn't; she was just looking back at him, a confident smile on her face.

"You?" he asked, confused.

"After I toss her up there, yes," said Matt before picking Chikorita up in his hand. Bambi continued to watch as Matt crouched down, bending at the knees while eyeing his target. He sprung back up, swinging his arm in an underhand toss and throwing Chikorita up towards the ledge. Bambi watched her clear it with a comfortable margin and disappear behind the landmass. A short time later, she ran back into his sight, stopping at the ledge's brink.

"Alright, haul us up with your Vine Whips!" said Matt. Chikorita nodded before extending the inexplicably long yellow vines out from the circle of buds around her neck. She coiled one vine around Matt's waist and the other around Bambi's midsection, and then hoisted them off the ground and up to the cliff with her. She set them down next to her before releasing them from her vines and retracting them back into her body.

"So what's next?" Bambi asked.

"We keep going," answered Matt, leading Bambi and Chikorita further into the cave. However, there was not much more ground to cover; the cavern ended underneath a tall vertical shaft cut out of the ceiling, coming straight down from parts unknown.

"Well, we certainly finished that step quickly," Chikorita joked, prompting a small smirk from Matt.

"There's our ride," he said, pointing to a large, flat platform that was the same bright yellow as the ? Blocks and the same shape as the chasm above it sitting on the ground.

"Let's go!" Chikorita was the first to step onto the platform, followed closely by Matt, and then Bambi. As soon as the fawn's hooves touched the object, it began to rise slowly up through the shaft, much to his surprise.

"Your home has some really strange things in it," he thought after a few seconds, looking in astonishment at the platform beneath him, moving with no rhyme or reason that he could see.

"I guess you're right," said Matt, looking up the channel. "I've just grown used to it from living amongst it all for so long. But even _I'm_ discovering new things about the Mushroom Kingdom from time to time. Just when you think you've seen it all, you find out you...well, haven't."

The platform continued towards the surface. Bambi could finally see the top of the shaft above him. As the platform came to a stop at said top, sealing off the hole, he looked around and took in the new scenery.

Like the cave they had just come out of, the walls, floor and ceiling were all stone. However, these stones were grey, and unlike the natural chaotic assortment underground, all shaped exactly the same and neatly stacked and arranged on top of each other, forming some very foreboding walls that rose high above his head and surrounded him and the others on all sides. A few windows were set within them here and there at the higher heights to let in a few beams of sunshine, but most of the light came from the burning torches mounted on the wall at Matt's eye-level.

"So what's _this_ place?" asked Bambi. "It seems a little like the inside of that castle of Princess Peach's, but...way less inviting."

"This is a fortress," Matt replied. "It's another kind of castle, sort of like how you have different kinds of forests, trees, flowers or whatever else have you. And you're right; it's about as inviting to outsiders as your dad is."

"Whenever Princess Peach gets kidnapped, she almost always ends up in a place at least somewhat like this," added Chikorita. "Over the years, the Koopa Troop have built hundreds of these things all over the kingdom in all shapes and sizes, adding more every time they kidnap the princess."

She looked around the fortification interior for herself. "But..." she said in a more uncertain, curious tone of voice, "I don't remember any fortresses with an inside like this. This must be a recent addition; wonder where it is?"

Matt reached into his pocket, took out his smartphone, and stared at the screen. "Well, let's see what the smartphone says....Huh."

"What?" Chikorita asked.

"It says we're back in the Moonview Forest," said Matt, bemused.

"Wait, _what!?_ " exclaimed Bambi. "How could that happen? That cave wasn't even long enough to get out of that jungle, and the Warp Pipe we took to get down there didn't go anywhere but straight down! How can we be all the way back in the forest?"

"Warp Pipes can be really bizarre things, Bambi," said Chikorita. "It's actually pretty rare for where you think you're going when you're inside it and where you actually end up to be the same place."

"I'm actually sharing Bambi's skepticism right now," murmured Matt, staring at his device as if he understood it no better than the Young Prince did. "Not because of the Warp Pipe, but because I didn't think a place like the Moonview Forest would be where Bowser would put one of these."

He kept his eyes on the phone for a little longer. "...No use, it's not pinpointing where we are beyond the general Moonview Forest. Not sure whether or not it's right...but it really doesn't matter right now; we have a princess to rescue."

He headed down the fortress corridor, with Bambi and Chikorita following behind. The air inside was abnormally cold compared to the brisk, refreshing breezes that Bambi usually expected in the early autumn. And even as a draft slowly blew through, coursing through his fur and making him shiver, the atmosphere felt still. _Too_ still. The air seemed to hang motionlessly where it was, and with its unfriendly grey color and columns rising silently up around him with not a single living thing to be seen in the air or on the ground besides the adventuring trio, the massively tall room seemed to be looking down on him in silent disdain. Bambi could almost hear it whispering, "Go away, you're not welcome here".

The small fawn cautiously followed Chikorita and Matt as they ascended a curving staircase, taking them to a balcony walkway that went along the walls a fair distance higher up.

"Strange we haven't seen anyone besides ourselves," Chikorita remarked.

"Well, if this place _is_ recent like you thought and recent enough," thought Matt, "then Bowser may not have staffed it yet."

The trio continued moving along the balcony before stopping at a wooden door in the wall. Slowly, Matt grasped the doorknob. It squeaked softly as he turned it, before throwing the door open and jumping into an adjacent room in an apparent ambush offense.

Following him through, Bambi found himself in a room that was smaller than the previous one, but with the same exact look and color. Matt had not taken out anyone with his surprise entrance as there was still no one else around besides them, but the feeling that he and the others were being watched persisted. Several ? Blocks hovered in various places around the room, tinted grey to match the site that housed them.

"Let's see what we got," said Matt, going over to one of the blocks and hitting it from below. A single Coin came out of the top, and the block was used. He headed for another one and punched it, with the same result. Bambi watched this play out two more times before taking a look at the ? Block closest to him, floating just above his head. For all of the reluctance to be here that he was harboring, he still didn't want to look completely useless by simply standing around and doing nothing; besides, the more help he could provide, the quicker they would finish, and that meant getting out of here and heading back home sooner. He wanted to help Matt and Chikorita clear the room, but he had no idea how to do it.

He stared at the ? Block for a short time, knowing he could not punch like Matt, nor could he throw Razor Leaves like what Chikorita was doing to hit some of the other blocks in the room. But perhaps he could use another part of his body...

_...Why not?_ Bambi thought before jumping up and hitting the bottom of the ? Block with his head.

He regretted it instantly.

"OW!" he exclaimed as his hooves came back into contact with the ground. He lowered his head, wincing from the consequent headache.

"You OK?" Chikorita called out.

Bambi started to reply as he opened his eyes again, but Matt cut him off. "Oh wow, an ! Switch!"

The Young Prince looked back up at the block he had bonked, now the same featureless grey as the other Used Blocks, before realizing that something was sitting on top of it. It was a blue dome about the same size as the block, sitting on a yellow base and adorned with something similar to the "?", but with a straight up-and-down upper line as opposed to a curled one. 

"I'm guessing the white thing on that is—" he began.

"Yeah, that's what we call an '!'; that's really all you need to know," replied Matt. "Well, that and these ! Switches set off things here in the kingdom."

"Things like what?"

"Things like anything!" said Chikorita. "We've seen all manner of wacky hijinks unfold when these switches are activated. Just like blocks, there are several types of switches in the Mushroom Kingdom, varying in both color and the symbol on them, but the majority are at least somewhat predictable in what they make happen. But blue ! Switches are total wildcards; they can do just about _anything._ "

"So what'll that one do?" asked Bambi.

"I don't know, but given our location, it's most likely that some bigger or slightly more skilled version of a normal Koopa Troop minion is gonna come out from somewhere to battle us," said Matt, making Bambi take a quiet, worried gulp. " _But,_ whenever we defeat such a foe in a fortress like this, it generally opens a way forward, usually right to our goal. We shouldn't have to do much more once we dispatch that boss."

With that, he leapt over Bambi's head and landed on the top of the ! Switch, stomping it flat into its base. Bambi looked around the room tensely as the activated device winked out of existence and Matt landed back on the floor, waiting for whatever was going to appear before them.

Moments later, it felt like the ground under his hooves had vanished. Bambi had just enough time to look down and realize that that was exactly what had happened; the stone floor had collapsed out from under them, split into two huge flaps that were now hanging limply from their pivots at opposite ends of the room, opening up a gaping hole into which the three friends promptly fell.

Bambi fell a short ways before landing in a sitting position on a slanted stone surface, which he immediately begin sliding down. The fawn skated right into an opening in one of the walls, continuing on a straight, downward course as the channel shrank into a smaller tunnel before curving to the right.

Bambi felt himself spiral down and down for three revolutions before the tunnel straightened out and ended almost immediately afterward at a hole in the wall of another room. As Bambi left the slide, he fell through the air for a split second before...

_SPLASH!_

The Young Prince found himself completely underwater. He quickly struggled back to the surface, gasping for air, as he felt the dried graffiti paint still caked onto his fur slowly release from it and dissolve away. Swimming over to a nearby stone shore, Bambi hauled himself out of the water, shook himself dry, and then looked around.

The body of water that he had fallen into was tucked away in one end of a room that looked very much the same as the rest of the fortress, but this room had some accentuating decorations. A couple of black, spike-riddled chandeliers hung from the ceiling on thick chains, and several pedestals lined the walls, each with a small, completely dark grey sculpture of a hulking creature. It bore a loose resemblance to the Koopas, but was still something that Bambi had never seen before, and with the huge fangs in its mouth, horns on its head, claws on its hands and feet, and spikes on its shell and top of its tail, wasn't sure he ever wanted to.

"Hahaha, he fell for it!" sang a familiar childish voice. Bambi looked down at the other end of the room. The small creature he had seen at Princess Peach's Castle and in the jungle was dance-hopping from one foot to the other and back again with his back turned. He whirled around to face Bambi and was immediately taken aback upon seeing him. "...Wait, you're not Matt."

He started running towards Bambi, who immediately scrambled and turned to swim back to the tunnel that had brought him here, only to realize that the entrance was halfway up the wall and well out of his reach, leaving him cornered at the edge of the water.

He froze in fear as Bowser Jr. came closer, when he suddenly stopped a surprisingly decent distance away and started simply looking Bambi over with a puzzled frown and cocked eyebrow.

"...You from this forest?" he asked after a few moments of tense silence. Bambi took a quick breath as Bowser Jr. continued quietly scrutinizing him, thrown off by the unexpected question before remembering what Matt had said about their location.

"Yeah, sure," he replied quickly, trying to keep his cool.

"...Cool, the rumors about Moonview Forest critters being able to talk must be true!" said Bowser Jr. with a grin. "I can't wait to tell my dad once I get back to the castle."

"...Back?" Bambi looked confused. "This isn't where you live?"

"Nah, I just came here to catch my breath and get an escape plan together," said Bowser Jr. "I don't think I'll be able to take out a Defender like I originally thought, so I'll probably have to settle for just kidnapping Peach. My dad should still be proud of me if I can at least hang on to her."

"...Proud of you for kidnapping someone!?" exclaimed Bambi incredulously.

"Yeah!" replied Bowser Jr. "My dad loves Princess Peach, and he _hates_ the Defenders. He's constantly trying to beat the tar out of them and take Peach for himself. I wanted to see if I could please him by doing that all by myself; I'd do anything to make him proud of me."

Bambi blinked his eyes a few times, not sure what to say. He could certainly understand wanting to please a parent, but how his acquaintance was going about doing it seemed pretty disturbing and wrong.

"...I guess...you and your dad aren't on the best of terms?" he finally wondered aloud.

"What? No!" Bowser Jr. cried. "Why would you say that?"

Bambi stared at the young Koopa, once again thrown off by what he was saying.

"...It's just—I had the same thought once, willing to do anything to make my dad happy," he explained. "But my dad's always been the strong, silent, and reclusive type, and I tended to feel really distanced from him, so what I was trying to do was...I guess connect with him more. Made me wonder if it was the same thing with you."

"Oh no," said Bowser Jr. "My dad's strong, but he's far from silent or reclusive. And he's already proud of me; he tells me that all the time."

He paused as Bambi continued to look at him with increasing bewilderment.

"I just wanna make sure he _stays_ proud of me," he finished, making Bambi drop his puzzled expression.

"I see," he said. "I...guess that works."

Bowser Jr. nodded.

"...Hey, wanna play with me?" he asked. "I'm kinda bored right now, and my plan isn't getting off the ground for a while, so I thought we could do something to pass the time until then."

"...Well, what did you have in mind?" Bambi replied cautiously. This kid sounded like he was into a lot of bad stuff, and he had no intention of getting mixed up in any of it.

"Well, usually I like to cause trouble for others, but since there's no one here besides you and me, I thought we could make some art instead!" Bowser Jr. said, brandishing the large object he had used to soil the fawn with black sludge in the jungle.

"...What's 'art'?" Bambi asked.

Bowser Jr.'s eyes went wide. "You don't know what art is!? Where've you been, in a log?"

"...Yeah, I _live_ in one," said Bambi bluntly with a matching grimace.

"Oh." Bowser Jr.'s voice sounded as flat as his question had fallen, but it quickly recovered. "Well, c'mon! I'll show you!"

He took off back across the room. Bambi stood where he was for a little while longer before hesitantly following.

_I hope Matt or Chikorita show up soon,_ he thought. _Wonder where they went...?_

* * *

_THUD!_

Matt lay on the ground, trying to recover from the shock of having landed on his stomach.

"Mmmph..." he moaned before rolling over and sitting up. He looked back at the fortress wall just in time to see two large stone slabs come together to seal off the hole he had been spit out of, before sliding forward to become flush with the wall, leaving no indication of any opening behind it.

"Man," he sighed in frustration. "Bowser Jr.'s probably laughing his tail off at me right about now."

He looked around him. The trees and vegetation that surrounded him instantly gave away his location.

"Oh yeah, we're definitely in the Moonview Forest," he commented, turning his attention back to the embattlement in front of him. Suddenly noticing a glimmer of twinkling water peeking out from the wall just the tiniest bit, he ran alongside the fortress perimeter a short distance and was greeted with the sight of a large lake extending a significant distance into the trees. The fortress sat perfectly centered on the edge so as to have one half on the ground while the other extended down under the surface of the water.

"And at Friendship Lake, too!" Matt exclaimed, pulling out his smartphone and bringing a map of the kingdom up on its screen, the location marker of which now confirmed his position on the shore of the "8"-shaped body of water. He raised his head back up to look at the fortress and lake again.

"...Good Arceus, this thing makes the lake look _so_ ugly," he thought. "And it wasn't here the last time I was! Honestly, how does the Koopa Troop build these things so quickly?"

He eyed the large tower for a couple of seconds as he put his phone away.

"I'll save that question for later," he said to himself. "Right now, I've gotta get back in there."

Matt jogged alongside the fortress's perimeter in the opposite direction, looking the exterior over for any ground-level doors, windows, or anything else that would permit him entry. There had to be some straightforward way in, after all; otherwise, the fortress would be little more than a big mountain of stone. But about half a minute later, Matt reached the edge of the lake on the fortress's other side, with nothing to show for it.

"No ground entrance?" he mused. "So...what, do they have an airship landing pad up top, or do they have to go out of the way to use that Warp Pipe the way we—?"

He cut himself off mid-sentence as he sensed something moving through the woods behind him. Something as big as him, with antlers.

_The Great Prince!_ he thought in panic, sprinting straight for the nearest brush and diving into it. A few seconds later, a small slit opened up in the shrub and two blue-grey eyes peered silently out at the large stag as he walked slowly towards the fortress. Matt waited for him to turn and advance on his hiding spot, but The Great Prince had all of his attention on the massive stone tower sitting on the edge of Friendship Lake, staring at it as if it was a painting he didn't understand. Not that The Great Prince would understand a human creation like a painting in the first place, though.

_Did I actually manage to stay out of his sight?_ Matt wondered, knowing the stag could show up as quickly and quietly as a Ghost-type Pokémon, and he would not often notice until it was much too late.

He felt a breeze blow gently in his face. _Well, I'm downwind, so he at least shouldn't be able to smell me..._

He held his position in the bush as The Great Prince continued to inspect the fortress. Matt wanted him to leave really badly; he needed to find a way back in there, and he couldn't do that without revealing himself to The Great Prince and being subjected to his eviction attempts if he was hanging around here, too. Not to mention the big buck would probably interrogate him about what such a huge abnormality was doing on the shores of Friendship Lake, and if he learned that such dangerous creatures like Bowser and his henchmen were mulling around in the forest in addition to Matt himself, or even worse, that he had dragged his unwilling son into one of his conflicts with the Koopa King...

_Hang on a minute..._ In the midst of his thoughts, Matt noticed something about the fortress.

"Oh man, if that's what I think it is, I'm probably gonna be able to catch two Pidgey with one Poké Ball!" he whispered excitedly. "But first I need to make a quick trip back down south."

The Defender jumped up and immediately took off into the woods, making no attempt at a stealthy departure. Hearing the rustling of the shrubbery and tree branches, The Great Prince turned to look at where he had hid, but after a few seconds of nothing else happening, he finally turned and started to walk back into the forest himself, pausing to glance at the fortress one last time before heading on his way.

* * *

_WHAP!_

A Red Koopa went flying through the air, retreating into its shell as it hit a wall and fell to the ground. Chikorita turned her Vine Whips on a Green Koopa approaching from behind her, striking it hard across the cheek and knocking it out instantly. Retracting her vines, she quickly jumped to evade a swooping Paratroopa before giving it a Razor Leaf to the back of the neck. The green-shelled turtle disappeared into its shell and fell out of the sky as Chikorita dashed for the Red Koopa shell by the wall. She gave it a hard kick with her hind legs, and the shell bounced off the wall at an angle and plowed into a small group of Goombas, sending them flying into the air in different directions.

With the majority of minions felled, Chikorita dashed off through the bleak stone hall, pursued by some Paratroopas and a couple of Goomba and Koopa stragglers. She had been dumped in here after a fall and short slide ride, and then immediately beset by a Koopa Troop squadron. Now she was on the run for the third time in this one room, fending off her assailants while trying to find a way out.

_These guys may be slouches in combat, but they're certainly not when they're chasing after you,_ she thought, looking around for a door, archway, Warp Pipe, or anything else that could be a possible exit as the minions continued to stay on her tail. She caught sight of a wooden door set in the wall up ahead, emblazoned with a huge black " **+** " and an upward-pointing triangle on top of it.

"That'll work," she said, running for the door. "I've never _ever_ seen anyone from the Koopa Troop actually use a door."

She skidded to a stop in front of it before extending a Vine Whip and grasping the large metal ring mounted on the door with it to pull it open. She rushed into the adjacent room, pulling the door closed once she was inside. When she turned around and took stock of the dimly lit room, however, she was greeted with a very big surprise.

"Princess Peach!"

"Chikorita!" The princess echoed Chikorita's exclamation from the other side of the room.

"Oh, thank Arceus I found you!"

"What are you doing here?" Peach wondered.

"Well, Matt and I came here to rescue you," Chikorita answered, "but then we got separated."

"Matt!?" said Peach worriedly. "And neither Mario nor Yoshi are here with you?"

"Nah, it's just us. Mario and Yoshi _were_ with us, but we split up to cover all the potential routes Bowser Jr. could have taken. They took the most likely-looking path, but I guess the right way was actually ours."

"Well, we should go find Matt before he gets hurt," said Peach, heading for the exit. "I really wish he'd stayed back at the castle and helped clean up while letting the more experienced Defenders handle this matter. Shooting down one of Bowser Jr.'s airships was more than enough of a contribution from him."

"From what I've seen, this place doesn't seem particularly complicated or maze-y," said Chikorita as she followed the princess out. "He's gotta be close by, I'm sure of it."

* * *

Twigs snapped, leaves rustled, and sweat dripped from an exhausted Matt's brow as he staggered through the Moonview Forest. He had been running for what felt like miles, reduced to taking huge gasps for air and gripping the passing tree branches just to keep himself on his feet and stumbling forward. Endurance had never been one of his strong suits, and he was just about ready to let himself pass out.

_Where the frig is it!?_ he thought, swatting away an obstructing branch. _I know this forest better than I do any other part of the kingdom. If I get myself lost _here,_ I swear to Arceus I'll—_

He paused as his quarry suddenly came into view.

"...thank him that I finally found what I was looking for," he finished, taking a huge breath before letting out an equally huge sigh. "And I think I'll thank him again, 'cause there's no way I'm making the trip back on foot. Not in my current state."

* * *

"There you go! Just like that!"

Bambi gripped Bowser Jr.'s Magic Paintbrush in his teeth as he drew awkwardly on the stone wall. After finishing, he stepped back, dropping the brush on the floor and looking at his work. He had finished (badly) coloring in an outline of an empty Koopa shell that Bowser Jr. had drawn on the wall beforehand.

"Sorry it's so sloppy," said the fawn, though his playmate did not seem to mind.

"Okay, let's do a, uh, hmm..." Bowser Jr. scratched his chin. "Let's do a Fire Flower next!"

Running over and picking up his paintbrush, Bowser Jr. stood before a clean spot on the wall next to his Koopa shell sketch and began to paint. Stroke by flourishing stroke, an image of a round-faced plant with eyes and two leaves at its base began to come together on the stones.

"Teaching painting lessons?" a voice asked.

Bowser Jr. spun around to face who had spoken, leaving his drawing incomplete, followed shortly by Bambi. Chikorita stood a short distance from them, accompanied by another unfamiliar Man who pretty strongly resembled the large crude drawing on Princess Peach's Castle that had so quickly grabbed his attention.

_Could that be Princess Peach?_ Bambi wondered silently.

"Aw, you gotta be kidding!" said Bowser Jr. "The Defender wannabe's _pet_ managed to rescue Princess Peach?"

_I guess that _is_ her._

"Hey, there's a reason Matt picked _me_ for his pet, Bowser Jr!" Chikorita replied.

"Well, you're not getting away with the princess!" Bowser Jr. declared, starting to run towards the small Pokémon. "I'm not about to come out of this _completely_ empty-handed!"

"Bring it!" said Chikorita before running to meet him.

"Oh, please be careful!" Peach urged as the two reached each other in the middle of the room.

Bowser Jr. attacked first, swinging the Magic Paintbrush at his foe. Bambi expected paint to fly, but it didn't; Bowser Jr. was aiming to hit Chikorita with the brush itself, waiting until she was much closer to him before taking the swing.

Chikorita ducked to let the art weapon fly over her head before spinning around on her toes as she slid to a stop, keeping Bowser Jr. in her sights as he ran past. As he stopped himself and turned to charge at her again, Chikorita sent out her Vine Whips, aiming and striking at her opponent's feet.

The attack tripped Bowser Jr. up and left him lying on the back of his shell, and Chikorita wasted no time in running over and stomping him on his belly as hard as she could, eliciting a short, sharp "Ow!" for her trouble.

Bowser Jr. was quick to recover, though, throwing Chikorita off him as he jumped back to his feet. Brandishing his Paintbrush, he swung at her with it again, and this time, paint did fly. It splattered across the stone floor, just barely missing Chikorita, and she immediately turned tail and started running away.

Bambi watched in surprise as Bowser Jr. gave chase. He didn't know Chikorita particularly well, but he had never seen her just flee like that; she always had a temperament pretty similar to Matt, never shying away from a fight even if she wasn't as belligerent as her owner. Although, Chikorita also always said her kind was closely related to plants, and whatever was coming out of the Magic Paintbrush looked pretty toxic. Perhaps that stuff was capable of really harming her if she got hit with it.

More streaks of paint plastered the fortress floor as Chikorita continued to both dodge what Bowser Jr. was throwing at her and take care not to touch the paint already on the ground. Running around, jumping over, the small yellow creature made sure she stayed muck-free. Eventually, however, she finally stopped, turned around, and started a counterattack, spinning her head leaf and hurling Razor Leaves back at Bowser Jr.

The sudden onslaught caught the young Koopa off-guard, and then it was his turn to go on the defensive, forced to use his paintbrush's handle to deflect the sharp projectiles. As Chikorita kept the barrage up, she started moving in closer to her opponent. Once she had cut the distance between her and Bowser Jr. by about half, she abruptly stopped her Razor Leaf onslaught and stood her leaf straight up in the air. A grey substance that Bambi could only describe as some kind of cross between pollen and a cloud began to emanate from it, drifting and dispersing gently through the air.

Bowser Jr. started to charge the instant the last Razor Leaf was out of his way, but just as he hit the vapor, he significantly slowed down and relaxed. The change in behavior came as another surprise to the watching fawn, wondering how something as simple as a light haze could subdue such a fierce creature, but once it reached him, he instantly knew.

It was the sweetest aroma he had ever smelled. All of a sudden, his fears and uncertainties about this little adventure were all starting to melt away. He almost felt like he could just lay down, curl up, and fall asleep right there in the fortress.

He was brought back to the realm of reality by the _**CRACK!**_ of Chikorita's Vine Whips striking Bowser Jr. across the face. The spike-adorned turtle stumbled off to the side as Chikorita rushed in, ready to stomp him as soon as he fell on his back, but she aborted her charge when Bowser Jr. fell on his belly instead, his spiked shell keeping himself immune to stomps. To make matters worse, the slap on his snout had jolted Bowser Jr. back to full alertness just like its sound had done to Bambi. He somersaulted backward out of the fading fog before snapping his fingers.

A synthetic pulsating sound echoed throughout the fortress as a white cup-shaped object with yellow accents and a somewhat uncanny face floated down from overhead. Bambi eyed the strange craft skeptically as Bowser Jr. leapt into the air and landed inside it.

_Is that supposed to be...cute?_ he thought as the face opened its eyes and blinked. It began to float back and forth over Chikorita's head as she grimaced defensively.

"Haha, weren't expecting my Junior Clown Car, were ya?" Bowser Jr. taunted. He followed his taunt with a deep breath before spitting a fireball at Chikorita. Undaunted, she jumped to the side to let the orange projectile hit the floor and puff out of existence, and then sent a few Razor Leaves up at the Junior Clown Car.

All of them either missed or bounced harmlessly off the exterior.

Bowser Jr. cackled again before breathing another fireball at Chikorita, this one moving much faster through the air than the first one. She still managed to dodge, but the fireball hit so close to her that the poof of wind it gave off when dissipating was enough to blow her off-balance.

The small Pokémon toppled over face-first right onto a paint streak next to her. It took her a moment or two to start moving again, forcing herself back to her feet, now with a decent amount of slime smeared over her face and head leaf along with an expression of pain.

"Oh dear, Chikorita!" Peach exclaimed anxiously. Bambi was not much better. He wanted to intervene and help Chikorita out, but Bowser Jr. was in an entirely different league than the likes of Man's dogs or his old rival Ronno, two things that he was much more familiar and at ease with in fighting, mainly because neither could breathe fire.

_SPLASH!_

The Young Prince's head whipped around to face the pool he had fallen into as something burst out of it in a spray of water. As it rocketed through the air above him on a direct course for the Junior Clown Car, Bambi's eyes struggled to figure out exactly what it was. It looked like the "kart" that Matt had brought to the forest earlier in the day, but it was moving much too fast for him to know for sure.

The target, a very shocked Bowser Jr, tried to jump ship before being hit, but he was too slow and the unidentified object struck his craft while he was only halfway out. The result was getting thrown off the flying bowl and sent tumbling to the ground, landing on the back of his shell.

"HOLY—!!!" shouted a voice as the two objects kept going and slammed into the back wall, sending a cloud of stone dust out into the room. Beams of sunshine cut through the cloud as it cleared to reveal a newly punched out hole in the wall to the outside, along with the prone body of a familiar face lying in front of it.

"Matt!" exclaimed Princess Peach as the Defender started to get up.

"Princess!" Matt's head shot up in response to face his ruler before noticing the vulnerable Bowser Jr. out of the corner of his eye. "...Hold on a second!"

He staggered to his feet as quickly as he could and ran somewhat disjointedly for the Koopa flailing on his shell like a fish out of water. Bambi watched as he jumped, froze in midair above Bowser Jr, and flipped once in midair before coming down in a sitting position on his target. The attack sent Bowser Jr. flying up into the air with an accompanying scream of defeat, and he landed on his stomach a short distance away.

"...Wai—That's it?" Matt asked, slowly standing up again and staring at his defeated opponent. "Just one Ground-Pound? When did it start taking only one Ground-Pound to fell this kid?"

He walked across the fortress floor to the Koopa kid lying on the ground and stood over him as he slowly opened his eyes and glared back at Matt.

"I can keep pummeling you if you want," he said to Bowser Jr. "I may not have Mario's expertise, but I also don't have his niceness. So what's it gonna be? You gonna admit defeat, or do I still have to beat it out of you?"

"No, Matt!" Princess Peach objected, making Matt look up at her as she and Chikorita came over to him. "Seriously, you've done enough!"

Matt's mouth scrunched as he exchanged glances between Bowser Jr. and Peach a couple of times, before abruptly doing a double take upon seeing Chikorita, still splattered with goop.

"Good Ar—!" Bambi caught Matt's eyes darting back to Peach for an instant before returning to his friend. "Imean—Good Eldstar, what happened to you!?"

"Don't worry, it's nothing water can't wash away," Chikorita replied as Matt knelt down and looked her over. "But seriously, you've defeated Bowser Jr; give it a rest!"

Matt looked back at his foe again.

"...Fine," he sighed begrudgingly, a response that allowed Bambi to let out a breath that he did not realize he had been holding. He was definitely no stranger to the idea of Man having a penchant for killing and violence (and in truth probably expected to see it sooner or later, especially with a sour Man like Matt), but at least this proved that it wasn't the primal, uncontrollable instinct it was often made out to be in the circles of his forest. At least, not as far as Matt was concerned.

His thoughts were interrupted when Bowser Jr. jumped up without any warning and quickly leapt out of reach before anyone could react. He jumped straight out through the hole in the fortress wall and disappeared from sight.

Matt, Princess Peach, and Chikorita rushed to the edge of the wall just as Bowser Jr. reappeared inside his Junior Clown Car. The vehicle had a few scuffs scattered over its exterior, but otherwise seemed largely undamaged.

Bambi trotted over to the edge of the gap himself as Bowser Jr. waved his hands at them in a mocking manner, complete with an unintelligible "Ah-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa!" and a smug expression on the Clown Car. It was only after he turned away with a laugh and flew off into the distance that the Young Prince realized just what was outside.

The familiar land and foliage of his forest stretched as far as the eye could see, a sight that brought Bambi some much-needed relief. At least he was safely back in his home. He looked down to see Friendship Lake at the base of the fortress a short distance below them. The kart Matt had brought with him was floating in the water, partly submerged and severely damaged.

"Well, the bad news is I trashed the prototype," he heard Matt say. He turned to see his friend talking with Chikorita and Peach. All three seemed completely unaware of the fawn's presence. Not that he was complaining.

"The good news is that I was able to test everything I still needed to test, and it all worked perfectly," Matt continued. "So unless you still need the prototype for something, you should be all set to start mass-producing parts."

"I'm more worried about you right now, Matt," Princess Peach replied. "I saw the entrance you made, and slamming a racing kart into a stone wall doesn't usually end well."

"Yeah, I still remember Koopa Cape," said Matt. "Not my proudest moment. Especially when you tack the loss of five other karts to water damage onto that. Thankfully, water won't be an issue with these new karts...at least, not in and of itself."

"The karts aren't the point!" said Peach. "You did something that nearly got yourself killed!"

"Yeah, keyword _'nearly',_ " Matt retorted. "I'm fine, you're fine, everything's fine, right?"

"Not if you get hurt, it's not."

Matt snorted, but didn't say anything else. Princess Peach stared at him silently before her gaze drifted behind Matt and onto Bambi.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands together in delight. "And who might this little one be?"

Upon realizing that she was referring to him, Bambi panicked and scurried directly behind Matt, keeping himself as far out of Princess Peach's sight as he could.

"Oh, Bambi!" Matt exclaimed upon turning to see his four-legged friend. "I completely forgot about you. Are you okay?"

"I've, uh...I've been worse."

"Good, good," said Matt, turning back around as Bambi peered out at Peach from behind him. "Well then, let me introduce you to my primary handler and ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom. This is Princess Peach."

He gestured to the blue-clad she-Man with his hand as Princess Peach crouched down and held out her own hand.

"Hello there!" she said softly.

Bambi stayed where he was for a moment before giving Matt a side-glance.

"Go ahead," he said with a small grin. "Again, if you can tolerate me, you won't have any problems with her."

Bambi looked at Princess Peach again. As charmed by him as she sounded, the Young Prince could not help but be wary of an unfamiliar Man. He slowly stepped out from behind Matt and crept forward to sniff at Princess Peach's hand. It was strange because, unlike Matt, Peach's hand had its own smell, color, and texture all at once. Never before had he seen two members of the same species have such radically different skin.

"She looks a lot like that drawing on her castle," he commented.

"Yeah, that was kind of the point when they made it," said Matt.

Bambi's ears lowered as Peach moved to pet him.

"When were you going to tell me Moonview Forest whitetails could talk?" she said while scratching the fawn gently behind the ears, something that quickly brought out a smile on Bambi's face in spite of his reservations. "You never told me anything about befriending one!"

"I didn't?" said Matt with a cocked eyebrow. "...Huh, must've slipped my mind."

"What made you think she knew?" Chikorita asked. "You've _never_ told her about Bambi."

"Well, I knew Goombella and Parakarry knew, and I knew Mario and Yoshi _didn't,_ " Matt replied, "...but I could've _sworn_ I told the princess about him at _some_ point..."

"It doesn't matter," Princess Peach said as she stroked the Young Prince's back. "I know about him now. But what's a deer doing here inside one of Bowser's fortresses?"

"I brought him along with me to show him a little bit of the Mushroom Kingdom outside the Moonview Forest," Matt explained before turning to Bambi. "And I owe you an apology for doing it. I wouldn't have brought you along if I'd known it was gonna go awry like it did. I never meant for you to get left on your own at any point while you were still learning about the world outside your forest."

"It's fine," Bambi said. "As you might say, I'm striding as I take it."

An awkward silence hung in the air.

"That's 'taking it in stride'," Matt finally said.

"Right, that."

"So, if I asked you to come with me on another adventure, would you?" asked Matt with a small smirk.

"Absolutely not," replied Bambi immediately.

Matt snickered. "Yeah, I figured you'd say that. Thanks for your help on this one, anyway. And now you know a little bit about what lies beyond your forest, too. _And_ you're safe, so all is well....Well, except for the prototype kart."

"About that," said Peach, standing back up, "how did you manage to bring that here?"

"Yeah, didn't you leave that down by the South Meadow?" Chikorita wondered.

"Well, when we got separated, I got dumped completely outside the fortress, and there was no readily available way back in because apparently they decided to build this fortress with an underwater entrance instead of the usual ground one," Matt recalled, staring down at the lake. "But once I spotted it under the lake surface with a little bit of recon, I realized I could get the last of the kart-testing done _and_ save the Princess at the same time. Add a quick trip to retrieve the prototype onto that, and here we are."

"How did you get yourselves separated in the first place?" Peach asked.

"We came upon an ! Switch and I hit it, thinking it'd summon one of Bowser's big baddies," explained Matt. "Then the floor broke."

The princess sighed. "This is why I don't like you going with Mario and Yoshi to save me. With how inexperienced you are compared to them, you keep unnecessarily putting yourself at risk."

"Oh, c'mon, how else am I supposed to learn?" Matt complained. "Staying at home isn't gonna net me any experience."

"But you can't get experience in a reasonably safe manner until you're more attuned to the Koopa Troop and the ways they organize themselves," said Peach. "What you just described, for instance; you should know that Bowser never sets up his commanders to be revealed by an ! Switch. It's much more likely that you'll get spontaneously locked inside a room before one of them appears."

"Duly noted," replied Matt. "But still, I made it out in one piece, _and_ I was able to complete the kart testing like you asked."

"And that's good. But try to be safer next time."

Matt sighed, and then his eyes widened.

"Aw nuts, I just realized I never asked Jr. what his troops are searching for here in the forest..."

"Oh, don't worry about that," said Peach. "You'll get another chance."

"Yeah," put in Chikorita. "I mean, it's not like this is the last time the Princess is gonna get kidnapped."

"As much as I wish it was..." Princess Peach shook her head.

"Wait," said Bambi. "Does this sort of thing happen to you regularly!?"

"Sadly, yes," said Peach wearily. "I'm sort of used to it, but even so, me getting kidnapped is such a pervasive occurrence that I have to keep people like Mario, Yoshi, and Matt around to protect me. And I'm not proud of that."

"Well, I'd say this kidnapping is all wrapped up," said Matt. "Let's get out of here."

He turned and stood right on the edge of the hole in the fortress wall.

"Bob-ombs away—!" Matt started to jump when something caught his eye and made him try to stop himself partway through. The attempt failed miserably, and Matt tumbled inelegantly off the fortress into the lake below. When Bambi stepped to the edge himself, he saw why.

His father was standing on the lakeshore, glaring up at them.

_Oh buck,_ thought the fawn as Matt came back up from underwater, shaking water out of his hair.

"Meet you down there, Princess!" Chikorita rushed past Bambi and took a running leap off the fortress herself. Princess Peach was the next to leap off the ledge, but instead of simply falling down like Chikorita, she glided over the water like a leaf riding the wind, slowly and gently descending to make a landing on the shore. Bambi stared down at her, wondering how she could do that, but after thinking back on everything else he had seen today, decided not to question it. It was probably normal for them in _some_ way, shape, or form.

_...Well, guess there's nothing else to do but go down and join them,_ he thought. Taking a few steps backwards, he ran and jumped through the hole, falling down to a watery landing. After making his way back to and breaking the surface of the water, he took a quick look around him.

Matt had swum over to the prototype kart and was now pushing it in front of him on a course for the lakeshore, while Chikorita had already reached the shore and pulled herself out of the water near where Princess Peach had touched down. His father, meanwhile, was calmly walking along the shoreline, moving to intercept Matt as soon as he reached it.

Bambi swam after Matt, easily overtaking him and reaching the lake's edge first. He clambered out of the water behind his dad as Matt reached the shore in front of him. The Great Prince continued to scowl at the Man as he pushed the ruined kart out of the lake and onto the grass.

"I thought I told you to _leave,_ " he growled.

"Hey, I _did_ leave!" said Matt defensively before jumping out of the lake. "It's just that my travels wound up bringing me back here."

Bambi watched Peach and Chikorita walk up behind Matt, who turned to face them.

"We should go," he said to them. "We need to get the prototype back to E. Gadd."

"Here, let me help you," said Peach, moving to one end of the kart. Matt stood on the opposite side before glancing at Bambi's dad again.

"You're welcome to help us cart this kart out of here," he said to The Great Prince. "We'll be gone that much faster."

The Great Prince simply growled before turning away in a huff. "Come, Bambi."

Matt and Peach each crouched down, gripped their side of the wrecked prototype in their hands, stood back up, and started carrying it together across the meadow, with Chikorita following close behind. Bambi turned to follow his father in the opposite direction, but even as he walked away, he could still hear Princess Peach ask "Who was that huge deer?" along with Matt's reply.

"That's Bambi's dad. He's...not too keen on me."


	5. 1-5: A General-Purpose Mission

This was it. Matt had found the thief he was looking for, and now she was on the run. She had eluded him once before, when the GizmoTapper 586-LC's battery died after spending too much time struggling to assemble her wanted poster, and then to add insult to injury, she sprung three of her previously-captured henchmen from jail, forcing Matt to track down and recapture them before getting a second chance at her.

That was not going to happen again. For this go-round, he had focused on following her to and through the correct countries, trying to spend as little power as possible traveling and looking for clues. But the chase had been a long one, requiring a lot of clue-finding to determine what order he had to visit the countries in to stay on the villain's trail, as well as journeying unnecessarily around the region a couple of times after going to the wrong place entirely. As a result, the battery had still managed to drain to dangerously low levels in spite of Matt trying his hardest to keep it healthy by _not_ doing those exact things.

To that end, Matt had also not spent a lot of time constructing the wanted poster, since doing that somehow sapped the battery's energy, too. There were only enough pieces in place to clearly identify who he was after. Matt figured that that would be enough; he really could see no reason why an arrest would not be possible just because the wanted poster was missing portions that would provide only a small bit of hair or clothing, or even less significantly, nothing but background color. He might have gone for a full assembly if it had been the same picture he had tussled with during the previous chase, but it wasn't, and Matt did not want to spend the same amount of time fighting to put together an unfamiliar image as he had last time, lest the GizmoTapper die out again. So he had just gone for the pieces that showed her face and the majority of her body and clothes, and the shortcut had paid off; he had found his target before losing power. Now it was up to the agents that had been helping him ever since he first set out on this campaign, Zack, Ivy, and Stretch the Crime Growlithe, to make the actual capture; there was nothing more that he could do except sit and watch from the computer desk he was at.

The criminal he was chasing, a woman with brown hair and wearing a bright red hat and longcoat, sped into view driving an equally bright-red convertible from the right side of the screen before disappearing just as quickly off the left. Moments later, a small orange and cream dog with black stripes on its front legs and back ran through the frame after the car, barking up a storm.

_Go, Stretch!_ thought Matt, cheering the Growlithe on in his head.

He glanced at a small, blue and black lion cub with yellow accents in various places on its body that was standing just to the left of the computer keyboard. It was slightly crouched down while watching the screen just as intently as he was, almost as if it wanted to pounce on it. Matt grinned at seeing his family pet as enthralled in this mission as him, and he tried his hardest to not get totally carried away in their combined excitement.

The convertible zoomed back into their sight only to have its engine give out with a puff of smoke, stranding it squarely within the monitor's field of view. Stretch tried to skid to a stop behind it, but wound up crashing into the rear tire and falling on his stomach. A rope ladder dangled down from the top of the screen, and the woman jumped out of the car's driver seat and grabbed hold of it before Stretch could recover. Once it did, though, the Growlithe leapt onto the broken-down car and glared at the woman as she and the ladder started to ascend off the top of the screen.

Matt tensed in exhilaration as the screen faded to black. He knew that that ladder was attached to a helicopter, but not one that was hers. It was one that was _his,_ or more accurately, one that was Zack and Ivy's. They would pull her in before she could react, and then it would all be...

"Huh!?"

A shot of the open sky had appeared on the screen showing a helicopter hovering in the air, the rope ladder hanging out of its open side door. But this helicopter was not yellow like he expected; it was red, being piloted by a purple cat with cream markings in various spots on its body, along with large magenta markings over its green eyes. And on the tailboom, the four letters that Matt expected to read "ACME", instead read "VILE".

"So long, player," said the woman as someone inside the helicopter grabbed the ladder and pulled it and her in with them. "Better luck next crime."

"AWWWW, MAN!!!" Matt groaned, watching the helicopter turn around, fly into the sky, and disappear from sight.

"What's wrong, honey?" asked a voice. Matt looked to his right to see a woman coming over to the desk.

"Carmen got away again!" he moaned.

_"Shinx! Shinx Shinx!"_ The small cub pawed furiously at the computer screen.

"I know, Shinx," said Matt. "I wanna catch her too. So badly! But now I need to track down and nab three more of her V.I.L.E. villains again before I can get another chance to do that, and all of those cases are gonna be just as hard as this one!"

"If it's making you crazy, take a break," said the woman gently. "You don't have to catch Carmen Sandiego right this minute. Why don't you go out and play with Dale and Susan for a while instead?"

Matt took a minute to think about her suggestion. He wanted to stay on the computer, but maybe going out with his friends wasn't such a bad idea, either.

Carmen Sandiego was the primary way that world geography was taught at Matt's school. Every kid in his class had an ACME Detective Agency account in the school computers, and would pursue Carmen and those working under her as part of their geography lessons. However, most of the kids did not spend any more time chasing her beyond that.

This was not the case, though, with Matt, Dale, and Susan. All three of them possessed a passion far exceeding that of anyone else in their school for chasing the red-clad, absurdly skilled, and oddly alluring thief around the world; this shared ambition was how they had first become friends. Their drive was so strong that they would even forego traditional recreational school activities in favor of going after her. Any chance they got (most often during recess or after finishing an assignment or test early), they were on the computers following the trail of clues left behind by Carmen's roster of V.I.L.E. villains and arresting them one by one while learning neat and interesting things about the regions and countries they visited along the way.

Consequently, they had all torn through said roster much faster than any of their schoolmates, but once they had put all but about four or five criminals behind bars, Matt and Susan had somehow gotten stuck, being repeatedly unable to capture the crooks that were the focuses of the most difficult cases. This had not happened to Dale, however, and he had managed to keep going without too much trouble, becoming the first kid in school to capture Carmen Sandiego on the computers there a couple of days ago.

Matt did not want to fall too far behind Dale, and had been chasing Carmen on his home computer for the last hour as practice. He hoped that such vigorous drilling would sharpen his world skills and help him break his losing streak the next time he pursued Carmen and her cronies at school. But compared to the school game, his home program was definitely easier (it was designed specifically for a younger age group, and he had had it for quite a few years, well before he even started going to school), so if he was still having this much trouble tracking down Carmen here, there was virtually no chance of catching her there anytime soon. However, he also remembered that during a few of the dodgier school cases they had worked, he, Susan, and Dale would sometimes help each other figure out what to do or where to go next whenever one of them was stumped. The trio had not been able to do that for quite some time because it had been a long while since the last time they had gotten a chance to spend time together on the computers. But even if they couldn't help each other in the computer room, a playdate would still have plenty of opportunity for tips and advice...

"...Okay, Mom," Matt finally said, standing up from the computer chair.

"Don't worry," said his mother, smiling cheerfully. "You'll catch Carmen eventually, I'm sure of it!"

"C'mon, Shinx!" said Matt. "Let's go play with my friends! It'll be lots of fun!"

_"Shinx!"_ exclaimed the Flash Pokémon with a big smile before jumping off the desk and following Matt out of the computer room.

Matt turned left after entering the neighboring room and headed straight for the front door of their house. With Shinx right behind him, he turned the knob and pulled the door open, blinding himself completely with the white light on the other side.

* * *

"Ugh," Matt groaned softly as he lay on his bed, just starting to wake up. His eyes were still closed, but he could still feel the sunbeams trying to seep through his eyelids as they shone through his bedroom window and onto his face.

_I hate it when the sun shines right on my face,_ he thought, closing his eyes tighter and turning his head away from the window. _It's doing exactly what I wanted it to do every morning._

He tossed and turned for a few more seconds until he hit something with his foot.

"Whoops," he thought, hearing a soft yelp of surprise. The Defender sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked down at the end of his bed.

Chikorita slowly opened her eyes, stood up from where she had been sleeping by Matt's feet, and stretched herself.

"Sorry about that," said Matt. "I think I accidentally kicked you."

"Ah, that's all right," Chikorita answered before taking a big yawn. "I didn't sleep that well, anyway."

"I don't think I did, either," Matt thought, stretching his arms and yawning himself. "That storm we had last night was pretty bad. I'll bet even Luigi had trouble falling asleep."

"At least it's over," said Chikorita, looking at the bedroom window, situated in the wall just above the headboard of Matt's bed. A few water droplets clung to the glass outside, but the sky was no longer overcast, and the pouring rain had subsided, leaving the morning sun free to grace the mountains and hills of the Mushroom Kingdom with its rays.

"I do remember having a dream, though," said Matt, still lost in his own thoughts, "so I must've slept for _some_ period of time..."

"What'd you dream about?" Chikorita asked.

"Oh, just a stupid thing I did when I was six."

"Did you kick something you weren't supposed to?" Chikorita grinned saucily at her owner.

"Noooo!" said Matt indignantly, though Chikorita could see a tiny smirk of amusement on his face.

"So what _did_ you do?"

Matt's small smile dropped almost immediately. "Honestly, it's...really not important."

Chikorita stared silently back at Matt. Reclusive behavior coming from him was pretty normal, but sometimes Matt would take it to what she thought was an unnecessary extreme. In all the time that she had known him, he had never, ever said that she _wasn't_ his friend; why, then, did he seem to so often treat her like that?

Matt must have noticed her concerned expression, because he quickly added, "It's nothing you need to worry about, really."

"I hear that from you a lot in these kinds of situations," replied Chikorita, not eased in the slightest.

"Because it's true," Matt asserted.

Chikorita started to say something else, but her thoughts were interrupted when a leaf-shaped shadow was cast on Matt's bedsheets amidst the morning sunlight, catching the attention of both her and her owner. They turned their heads just in time to see the leaf detach from the window glass and blow away.

They moved closer and looked outside. Dozens of leaves flittered through the air, riding the brisk wind in different directions. They all looked exactly the same: striped horizontally in brown and orange with a circular cutout above the right of its two beady black eyes.

"That's an awful lot of Super Leaves," said Chikorita.

"The Tail Tree must have taken a real beating last night," Matt commented.

Chikorita nodded, watching the power-ups float for a few more seconds before something caught her eye. "Hey Matt, look! Out by the Post Fortress!"

"Hmm?" Matt shifted his gaze down from the sky to the earth. Over the roof of the villa neighboring his own, he spotted a small brownish-orange fortress out at the edge of the village. A flagpole twice its height stood nearby, the flag of the Mushroom Kingdom flying at the top.

What Matt and Chikorita were watching, however, was the slew of what had to be somewhere around 20 or 30 Goombas hounding the tiny fortification. Most were gathered around its base, but some of them were perched on the roof. Regardless, they all shared one overarching trait.

"Wait a second," said Matt. "Those Goombas...do they have _Tanooki tails!?_ "

"Can't say I've ever seen that before," Chikorita remarked.

They watched as a tailed Goomba jumped off from the top of the fortress and used its tail to glide gently through the air. It landed on one of the windowsills of the house sitting closest to the fortress before swinging its tail and smashing out the window.

"Oh no, they're attacking the village!" said Chikorita. "We need to go help!"

"Ah, man," Matt groaned. "That means I have to go out among the others. I hate that!"

"Oh, stop; it's not _that_ horrible," Chikorita said, jumping down onto the floor.

"No, a princess rescue is 'not _that_ horrible'," Matt snorted, standing up from his bed and heading for the bedroom door. "At least there, you can let your feet and fists do the talking."

He opened the door and Chikorita immediately rushed out into the hallway. Matt took a second to close the door behind him before following. They ran through the corridor, down the stairs into the living room on the floor below, and out the front door.

Matt's villa was one of several that collectively made up the village he lived in. All of them sat facing south, lined up side-by-side along a cobblestone path running east-west on a pretty straight course, though it did have a discernable meander to it. The ground rose up behind the line of houses to form a large hill, while a brown picket fence stood planted in the grassy field directly opposite the houses in a "C"-shaped path, lining out a rectangular area next to the path that included several flowers of various colors along with the Tail Goomba-swarmed fortress and flagpole, which would have otherwise stood adjacent to the eastmost house were they not also on the opposite side of the path. Some distance away, a modestly thick forest circled completely around the village.

By the time Matt and Chikorita had made it outside, though, the Tail Goombas had started to lose their general interest as a group in the miniature castle, and were slowly breaking off one by one to do their typical clueless wandering. The vast majority had settled into simply jumping back and forth between two spots on the ground, giving a single swing of their tails after each touchdown. A few, however, were eyeing the line of houses, as if they were considering following the lead of the one who had already shattered a window, still the only one at the moment to have actually attacked a house.

"Chikorita, handle the Goomba on the house first," Matt said. "I'll start cleaning up around the Post Fortress."

"Okay!" Chikorita rushed off to confront the Tail Goomba on the house, while Matt turned around and headed for the bastion on the edge of the village.

He took a running leap straight into the center of the Tail Goombas, flattening one of them as soon as he touched it. The rest immediately scattered like a flock of birds as Matt took out a second before it could get away. He ran over to another Tail Goomba and used it as a disposable spring to vault into the air on a course for a fourth that was already floating in midair with its Tanooki tail, but his jump was ill-timed, and he landed on the ground while his target sailed over his head.

_Hmm, these aren't like the regular Paragoombas,_ Matt thought, standing where he was and watching his foes for a few seconds. _Their movement through the air is much different._

He attempted to stomp yet another Tail Goomba that was about to take flight, but he misjudged the jump's timing once again and was forced to swerve in midair to keep it from smacking him in the face. He landed awkwardly and stumbled across the ground a few steps.

_This isn't working. I don't have time to learn a new timing pattern; I need to neutralize these Tanooki freak jobs right now._

He jogged over to a different Tail Goomba just as it landed on the ground. Before it could do anything else, Matt gave it a kick to knock it out. Immediately after, he grabbed the unconscious mushroom creature by its Tanooki tail and hoisted it off the ground. Winding up with a few circular swings over his head, Matt threw the Tail Goomba hard at a group of its buddies. The struck enemies went flying through the air in different directions, one of which struck someone just as they were coming out of the Post Fortress.

"Ow, hey!" exclaimed Parakarry, grabbing his mailbag to keep it from getting away from him.

_Oops,_ thought Matt with a smirk as he watched Goombella run out from inside the structure behind the mail Paratroopa.

"When will you learn that it doesn't matter how you power yourselves up!?" the Goomba shouted to her Tanooki tail-equipped brethren. "You're, like, no match for us at all!"

Matt ran over to the duo. "Hey, how's everything in there? Anything messed up?"

"Thankfully, nothing other than a large number of letters we're gonna have to pick back up off the floor and reorganize," replied Parakarry, "but they came pretty close to damaging some of the electronics a couple of times. We had six or seven of these creatures inside there, and for a moment, I wasn't sure Goombella and I'd be able to handle them. I have to say, the Tanooki tails really caught me off-guard; I've never seen Goombas use that power-up before."

Matt nodded. The small castle was actually his village's local post office, repurposed from one of many, _many_ tiny fortifications that had been originally built by Bowser years ago.

Little fortresses like this were by far the most common type of stronghold in the Mushroom Kingdom. Sometimes, for reasons that no one seemed to know, Bowser would build a huge bunch of these things, complete with supplementary flagpole and ugly mug-adorned Koopa Troop flag, all over the place as his minions roamed the landscape when he invaded the Mushroom Kingdom and kidnapped Princess Peach. Matt honestly doubted that Bowser actually _had_ any reason other than to satisfy himself in some strange, pointless way. Equally strange was the fact that it was not a standard part of his princess kidnappings; Bowser would only do it for certain abductions and not for others, completely on a whim, it seemed.

_Maybe that's for the best,_ Matt thought. _If he _did_ do it every time he kidnapped her, we'd be well out of real estate by now._

"Hey, Matt! I could use some help over here!"

Matt's head whirled around to look at the line of villas, as did Parakarry's and Goombella's.

Chikorita stood on the path running through town amidst some Tail Goombas that she had defeated, a look of worry on her face to match the tone of her call. When Matt surveyed the village, he saw why: several more Tail Goombas were on the houses, attacking them. As glass shards, splintered wood fragments, and bits of shingles flew from the windows and roofs, several small humanoid creatures with white mushroom caps on their heads that were spotted in a few different colors and wearing matching-color vests came running out of the villas in panic.

Matt glanced back at Goombella and Parakarry, along with the Post Fortress and what Tail Goombas still had to be cleared from its immediate area.

"Go help her with the Toads," said Goombella. "We'll finish up around here."

Matt shifted his gaze to Parakarry, who nodded in agreement. He nodded back before running over to join Chikorita, who had just knocked a Tail Goomba off of Matt's villa with a Razor Leaf.

"'Kay, that takes care of our house," said the Leaf Pokémon. "Let's go get the rest."

"Sure. You take that way, I'll take this way."

The duo split almost as quickly as they had joined up, running down the line of houses in opposite directions. Chikorita made a beeline for a trio of Tail Goombas that were poised to attack a pair of cowering Toads. She jumped on the head of one to stomp it, used her Vine Whips to smack away the second, and finished by throwing a Razor Leaf at the last one, sending it spiraling into the air.

The Toads slowly looked up.

Chikorita smiled. "Are you okay?"

Upon seeing their assailants no longer in a position to harm them, the mushroom creatures began jumping in joy, crying out "Yahoo!" in excitement.

Chikorita looked briefly over the rest of her side of the village. Tail Goombas were still roaming and other Toads were still panicking, but none of the latter looked to be in imminent danger from any of the former.

"All right, let's see what I can do about the other houses..." she thought, eyeing the villas and the foes on them.

Over on the opposite side of the village, Matt was busy with several Tail Goombas of his own, most of them also on the villas. A few that were not had decided to start chasing Toads in circles within the field, but the Defender was currently focused on clearing off the houses; they had already taken a considerable amount of damage from the Tail Goombas' assault, and Matt did not know, nor was he too keen on finding out how much more they could take before they started collapsing on themselves. The Toads, on the other hand, were both unharmed and running fast enough that their pursuers would never be able to catch them. As far as he was concerned, they weren't in any danger; thus, the immobile, defenseless, already-banged-up residences came first.

He jumped from one rooftop to the next, stomping a Tail Goomba as he did so. The next one he encountered was quickly dispatched with a quick kick. He was just about to move to the next roof when he spotted Chikorita on the ground below, dashing down the path in his direction.

She rushed right past the house Matt was on top of and went straight for the Tail Goombas that were chasing the Toads. Two Razor Leaves later, both were out of play and two more Toads were rescued.

"Matt, what are you doing up there?" she said. "Get down here and start saving these Toads! The houses can be repaired!"

Matt glanced back at the rooftops. Three more Tail Goombas still had yet to be fought, positioned only two or three rooftops away.

_I can knock these out quickly enough,_ he thought, darting across the roofs.

He jumped and stomped the closest Tail Goomba before kicking the second, which was standing right behind it, down the line of villas. He was about to make a run for the third, but stopped himself after seeing the Tail Goomba he kicked smack into it, knocking them both out. Matt smiled at the unintended double-knockout, before remembering his next objective, jumping down onto the path, and running back the way he came.

He paused and scanned the scene after reaching where he wanted to go. It was pretty much the same as it was before, except that Chikorita was now helping to clear out the Tail Goombas and rescue the Toads.

Matt kept going past the Leaf Pokémon and where she was fighting, his eyes on a few Goombas and Toads that were further away. He dealt with his targets one by one, starting with the closest and making his way further towards the forest, leaving jumping Toads and Goomba pancakes in his wake.

_Just one left,_ he thought, seeing the last of each of them some distance away. The Goomba was standing over the Toad, which was sitting on the grass, his back turned and his hands covering his eyes, quivering in fear.

_Sure,_ thought Matt with a frown as he approached. _Don't run away or try to save yourself. Just sit there and tremble while waiting for someone _else_ to save you. Useless fungis..._

He stopped. Something wasn't right with that Goomba. It had not moved an inch since he first spotted it, and it seemed rather...flat. Flat and wooden. He walked towards it a little more to get a closer look, and his face twisted into an intense scowl upon realizing what it actually was.

_Are you KIDDING me!?_ he thought, gritting his teeth in quiet fury. _It's a _sign._ IT'S A FREAKING _SIGN!!!__

He watched the Toad for a few more seconds before huffing in exasperation and going over to help it. Once he reached the fake Goomba, he gave it an unceremonious kick.

The sign splintered into several pieces that fell flat on the grass.

The Toad slowly looked up at where the wooden cutout had been, and then started bouncing joyously like the rest. Matt stared at it unamused for a few seconds before turning away with an exhale and shake of his head, and going back to Chikorita, who had just knocked out her last Tail Goomba in the immediate area.

"Looks like that's it for this part of the village," she said. "Where should we go next?"

"I dunno, they're really spread out now," Matt replied, seeing his foes now scattered far and wide throughout the forest clearing. "No matter where we go, this could easily take a good seven to ten more minutes to completely take care of."

Chikorita looked around pensively at the state of the town herself, before noticing something out of the corner of her eye.

"Well, lucky for us," she said, smiling at her owner, "we got help coming."

"We do?"

Chikorita gestured behind her with her head, and Matt looked to see what she was indicating.

Mario was running for the village, coming down the path from the east. His clothes were not the color they normally were; instead of a red hat and shirt with blue overalls, he was wearing a white hat and shirt with red overalls. Matt immediately recognized this as the wardrobe that Mario always had whenever he was powered up with a Fire Flower.

"Guess we do," said Matt to himself, waiting to see where the other Defender was going to go. "Fire Mario very much counts as help."

Just before he reached the Post Fortress, Mario veered off into the grass and started throwing fireballs at the Tail Goombas in it. The spheres of flame bounced along the ground on their way to their targets, hitting perfectly every time, all while miraculously avoiding setting fire to any of the grass they touched.

"Okay..." Matt murmured, observing how Mario was moving and who he was going after. "Looks like he's gonna clean out the field..."

The mustachioed Defender dashed back and forth across the meadow, never missing a beat as he took out Tail Goomba after Tail Goomba with either his fireballs or his feet. Matt's mouth scrunched up in envy at seeing the speed, efficiency, and flawlessness being demonstrated to him and everyone else with him. Before he knew it, Mario had cleaned out the entire meadow.

_That there's the kind of performance _I_ wanna be capable of one day,_ he thought with a small smile as Mario turned and began heading for him. He glanced at the other side of the village, and his smile vanished. _...Ah, geez, real productive, Matt. You're standing around watching Mario, and we still have Goombas to stomp._

He ran for a Tail Goomba idling near his house, one of the last two still standing in the village, with the other standing some distance away by the Post Fortress. Wanting to be done quickly, Matt snatched the nearest Goomba up by its Tanooki tail and moved to throw it at the one that was farther away. However, right as he went into his overhand backswing, he felt much of the weight of his improvised weapon disappear.

His head whipped around behind him just in time to see the Goomba bonk Mario right on the head. As the brown mushroom bounced off of him and onto the ground in defeat, Mario's clothes flashed different colors for a second before they were back to the colors that Matt most often saw him in: red hat and shirt, blue overalls.

Matt spun his head back around to look at the Tanooki tail he was still clutching in his hand, a few seconds before it vanished in a puff of smoke. He started to turn to face Mario and apologize, but the plumber rushed past him before he could do either, running for the last Tail Goomba and flattening it just like he did all the others.

"Okay, at least we're done, even if I did cost Mario his Fire form..." Matt said to himself as Mario came back towards him. Looking behind him once again, he saw Chikorita walking over to his side.

"Guess that does it," said Chikorita. "Thanks for the hand, Mario!"

Matt nodded at Mario in agreement, and the elder Defender returned the nod with a smile.

Matt turned his head to look out over the field, and had to fight hard to keep himself from audibly groaning. All of the Toads that had scattered far and wide through the clearing during the battle were now running for them.

_Great, now I have to deal with all the excessive, smothering attention and thank-yous these guys love to give after getting saved,_ he thought, gritting his teeth in displeasure.

He waited for the Toads to reach and crowd around him, but much to his surprise, the first Toad that reached him kept going right past him, not stopping or even pausing until he had reached Mario. Matt took a few steps away as every other Toad did the exact same thing, congregating around Mario while jumping and cheering.

_Good; _he_ can deal with that nonsense,_ Matt thought, watching Mario humbly taking the praise, even occasionally raising a hand for calm when a Toad got particularly excited even compared to the others.

He continued to silently observe the swarm of humanoid mushrooms and eventually failed to stop himself from grinning, if only because were he not averse to making a fool of himself, he would have probably been right there in the crowd fanboying over Mario along with the rest of the Toads. The plumber was an inspiration to all of the Mushroom Kingdom, Matt included, and the Toads were proving it right now with all the adoration they were giving him.

_He reminds me of Dale, actually,_ Matt thought, before the grin on his face quickly inverted into a grimace. _Well, back when they were my friends, anyway..._

* * *

Matt tried not to stumble over Shinx as they walked down the path. His Pokémon companion was weaving in between his legs while running eagerly from one side of the road to the other and back again.

"Easy, Shinx!" he said. "You're not a Zigzagoon, and you'll trip me if you keep this up!"

_"Shinx Shinx!"_ the small Pokémon barked excitedly.

The path curved left around the corner of a building before leading Matt and Shinx along the perimeter of an adjacent battlefield. Looking at it as he walked, Matt saw several kids, all about his size, clustered fairly close together on the Poké Ball symbol in the center of the field.

_Heh, all of them together like that, their hair looks like a thing of Skittles,_ he thought with a grin, seeing the heads of the kids sporting hair colored in red, green, orange, purple, pink, and both dark and light blue, alongside a few other colors as well. _I wish I had hair color like that instead of just a...bland brown._

He reached a gap in the identically brown fence ringing the battlefield and took a few steps in towards the group, with Shinx right on his heels. He cast an eye on the small gathering, looking to see if he recognized anyone. He didn't move in closer or take a really concrete, detailed look at the scene because he had little interest in finding out what they were doing or why; he was just giving it a brief, unmindful once-over to see what familiar faces might be there, and then he would continue on over to the part of his hometown where Dale and Susan lived.

His interest in the gathering grew, however, after noticing that he could put a name to a good seven or eight of the faces he skimmed over, many more than just the one or two familiars he thought that that fleeting scan would give him. In fact, now that he was starting to really focus on the kids whose backs were not turned to him, he recognized _all_ of the faces that he was seeing. Moving in closer and studying the multitude much more intently for several seconds, he realized that almost every single face in the crowd was one he knew.

"Wai—Why's my whole school class out here on the school battlefield on a _Saturday,_ when there's _no_ school?" he wondered.

A certain girl on the outskirts of the crowd caught his eye. Specifically, her blonde hair. It was virtually identical to the hair colors of a good amount of other boys and girls that were present, but this girl's hair shone considerably more vividly in the sunlight than the rest. Matt really liked this about her because it made her much easier to identify, be it from a distance, when she was mixed in with other people, or sometimes even both at once if it was sunny enough.

"Hey! Susan!" Matt called out to the girl while walking towards her.

She turned around to face who was calling her. Upon spotting him, her purple eyes widened in glee.

"Oh, hey Matt!" she said excitedly, waving to him. "What's going on?"

"Eh, not much. I was just watching you and the others huddled together and thinking about how we should be called 'The Skittle Class'."

Susan dropped the grin from her face and looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"...Because of all our different hair colors," Matt added.

"Oh..." Susan looked over the heads of the other children, and her grin returned. "Y'know, that's actually not a bad idea! But if that's what you're going from, then I think a better name for us would be 'The Skittleheads'."

Matt chuckled and nodded in agreement.

"So, why's everyone here on the battlefield?" he asked. "And also, where's Dale? Is he here somewhere?"

_"Shinx?"_

"Are you kidding? He's the reason we're all here," said Susan. "Everyone's been admiring and hounding him for advice since he caught Carmen Sandiego a couple days ago."

"Really?"

"Yep, he's not just the most popular kid in our class anymore," Susan continued. "He's the most popular kid in the whole _school_ now."

Matt stood on his tiptoes and tried to look over the heads of the other kids, looking to see where his other friend was. After a few seconds without luck, he finally walked over and joined the crowd.

All manner of praise and questions were being thrown around within the mass of children: "Was catching her easy for you?" "You're so awesome!" "Any advice on how I should chase after her?"

Matt pushed his way further into the mob, looking for Dale. He had to be somewhere...

_There he is._

In the center of the crowd was a boy with smooth, short black hair. His build was about the same as Matt, Susan, and the rest of the children, maybe a little thinner, and his brown eyes had a friendly air to them.

"How did you catch her so quickly?" asked the kid he was currently facing.

"It all comes down to dedication," Dale replied. "If you wanna catch Carmen as fast as I did, you can't just play during the lessons or your free computer time. You gotta play during recess, you gotta play during lunch, you gotta play after finishing a quiz early, you have to be chasing her every single time you get the chance. Otherwise, it's gonna take you a lot more time to find her."

"Can you help me out?" said another child. "I'm stuck on one of the cases because I keep messing up on which landmarks are where."

"Ah, that's a tricky case, that one," Dale mused. "You have to be careful when working that case because there's quite a few landmarks that are either not well-known or not in the city or region they first appear to be. Now, if you're really struggling with that one, let me give you some tips on what to keep in mind:

"First, make sure you know your mountains. Mt. Chimney, Mt. Hideaway, Mt. Moon, and Mt. Silver are all places that the crook leads you to at different times. Knowing them and their regions will keep you from wasting battery power traveling to the wrong place.

"Also, learn some of the lesser-known sights in the regions. You'll probably get a few clues that point to a place in relation to one of them. I can think of the Old Chateau in Eterna Forest, the Abandoned Ship on Hoenn's Route 108, and the House of Imite outside Fuchsia City as some of the landmarks you might hear about.

"And finally and most importantly, the Charicific Valley is in _Johto,_ not Kanto. Carmen's crew will try _very_ hard to throw you off with that at some point; don't let them trip you up."

"Gee, thanks!" said the kid.

Dale nodded with a warm smile, before turning his head and noticing Matt.

"Ah, Matt!" he exclaimed.

"Hiya, Dale!" Matt echoed the greeting. "I see everyone's asking you for Carmen advice."

"Why shouldn't they?" said Susan, coming through the crowd to join them along with Matt's Shinx. "He caught Carmen in, like, a third of the time it normally takes to catch her, and unlike me or you, he never let a crook get away or his battery die even _once!_ "

"He's epic!" shouted someone in the crowd. "We should call him 'Epic Dale'!"

"YEAH!" The rest of the children clamored in agreement. Shinx jumped up and down while yelping its name.

"Oh, c'mon, now!" said Dale with a humble smile. "Isn't that a bit much?"

But Matt smirked and nodded as he thought about the idea. "I dunno, I kinda like it; it's pretty catchy! 'Epic Dale'..."

"So what brings you here, Matt?" asked Dale.

"Oh, I was actually going towards your house before I found out you were here," Matt replied. "See, I've been having trouble catching Carmen at home, and it's been a while since you, me, and Susan have been able to work together, and that's always when we've had the most success, is working together. I thought you might be able to give me some tips of my own."

"Oh, sure!" said Dale. "We could do that right now, just the three of us!"

"Wait, you're leaving?" a kid in the crowd asked in disappointment.

"Not forever," said Dale. "There'll be plenty more time for this during school. But I've been here with you guys for the last hour-and-a-half; right now, I'd like to just spend some time with my best buddies."

Walking over to Matt, Susan, and Shinx, he ushered them out of the crowd and they headed back to the path next to the battlefield.

"So Carmen's been getting away from you at home?" said Susan as they started back down the path in the direction that Matt was originally heading.

"Yeah, I've already lost her twice," said Matt. "First she stole Mt. Coronet, then she made off with every Pokémon Center in the Hoenn region! And the game I'm playing at home is the junior one. You know, with Dee Jaye, Zack, Ivy, Stretch the Crime Growlithe, and Carmen's Purrloin, Carmine?"

Susan nodded.

"Well, if I can't catch her there, how will I ever be able to solve the rest of the cases at school?" fretted Matt.

"Easy, Matt," said Dale, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Don't get so worked up. Like you said, we'll always see success when we work together."

"And don't forget that I've been having almost the exact same problems at school as you," Susan added. "You and I're in the same boat, and Dale isn't so far ahead that he's out of our sight. We'll catch up, don't worry."

Matt smiled and nodded, feeling a little better and less worried.

"So tell me something," said Dale. "What kind of tips are you looking for?"

"Uh...hmm," Matt scrunched his mouth in thought. "Didn't really think about that....I guess just general stuff, really. I'm not exactly sure what's been messing me up; it might not even be just one single thing I'm having a hard time with."

"That's cool," Dale said. "If you don't know what the problem is, then we'll just figure it out; it's no big deal."

"Y'know, Dale's house is kinda far away,"said Susan. "What do you say we do some Carmen theme singing while we walk?"

_"Yeah!"_ Dale and Matt's exclamations of agreement were simultaneous.

* * *

"Matt? Matt!"

Matt blinked and looked around. The voice calling his name belonged to Goombella. She and Parakarry had joined Chikorita, Mario, and several Toads in staring at him.

"You looked lost," said Parakarry. "Everything okay?"

"Uh, yeah," said Matt. "I _was_ lost, in my thoughts, that is. So what'd I miss?"

"We were wondering what we should do next, what with all the Super Leaves flying around," Chikorita said.

"Well, I can't help but wonder what other Koopa Troop minions might be running around the kingdom with Tanooki Tails right now wreaking havoc," said Matt. "Now, I feel like we should have a really well-thought-out plan for this, but I can't think of anything more specific than 'make rounds through the kingdom gathering stray Super Leaves and seeing who else is sporting Tanooki tails that shouldn't be'."

The others were quiet for a few seconds.

"I dunno, that actually sounds pretty solid!" said Goombella with a grin.

"It _does?_ " Matt stared incredulously at the Goomba archæologist.

"Sure!" Parakarry said. "You don't always need a fancy strategy to remedy these sorts of things, Matt. Sometimes the simplest plans work the best. Take clearing this village, for example. That wasn't too complex, right?"

_I guess..._ Matt thought.

"Besides, I doubt you'd be able to come up with anything much more complicated given that all we have to work with right now is...well, _us,_ " said Chikorita.

"Wait, 'us' is all we got?" Matt asked. "Mario didn't bring a hammer or any other power-ups?"

"Mm-mmm." Mario shook his head.

"...Okay..." Matt stared at the ground. "...Hey Mario, lemme ask you something: before you came here, were you originally on your way to check the Tail Tree?"

"Oh yeah," said the plumber.

"Alright, I guess you wanna get back to that, see if it's okay," Matt said. "Since you'll be heading back out east, Chikorita and I'll go the other way."

"We'll stay here for now," said Goombella. "Once we finish cleaning up here, we'll head out on our own course."

"Sounds good," Chikorita said.

"Bring a few Toads with you, Mario," Parakarry suggested. "If you need anything, you can send them back here to let us know."

"Okey-dokey!" Mario picked out three Toads from the crowd, one each of red, blue, and yellow colors, before leading them east down the path and out of the village with a jump and a "Hoo hoo!"

_Ready, break,_ thought Matt as he watched Mario go. Once Parakarry and Goombella had gone back to the Post Fortress, he started off himself, following the path through the village westward into the forest, with Chikorita following close behind him.


	6. 1-6: Tailing Troubles

A red Paratroopa sat on the strip of grass running over the top of the castle wall he was on, gazing lazily out over the forest outside the embattlement. Behind him, molten lava bubbled and churned in a gigantic ground-level pool below, contained only by the barricade of tan stones. Towers stood built into the castle perimeter at regular intervals, all standing twice as high as the wall and topped with dark green conical spires and abnormally tall flagpoles that were not currently flying any flags.

A poof of smoke amongst the distant treetops caught his attention. He took a harder look at what was going on, and panicked upon figuring it out.

Matt and Chikorita were rocketing through the air directly at the winged turtle.

The Paratroopa scrambled off the ground and tried to muster the momentum to fly away as the pair rapidly approached.

But less than ten feet from the wall, gravity took over, and they arced into a descending trajectory and fell short of clearing the wall.

_SPLAT!_

Matt slammed full frontal into the side of the fortress. Chikorita followed right behind and struck him in the back, letting out an "Oof!" before falling several feet to the grass below.

"Oh no, someone's here!" the Paratroopa said to himself, looking down the wall.

He turned around and flew further into the castle. "I need to warn King Bowser!"

Matt slid down the wall to the ground where Chikorita was recovering.

"Ow," said the Leaf Pokémon under her breath, trying to stand back up.

Matt removed his face from the wall and stood up himself. "Well, _that_ didn't work..."

"What happened?" Chikorita asked, looking up the wall. "We were right on target and then, all of a sudden, we...weren't."

"I told you," said Matt, "I can't aim a cannon from inside it. C'mon, let's just go find an entrance into this place the normal way."

"I thought cannons _were_ your normal way for entering a fortress."

They headed off to the right, following the wall as it ran across the ground.

It had been a long journey from the village where they lived. They had been following the Super Leaves flying through the atmosphere in an attempt to recover as many as possible so as to prevent them from falling into the claws of the Koopa Troop, but thus far, they had yet to come into direct possession of any of them, mainly because they were all flying much too high in the sky for them to reach without requiring use of a power-up, of which they currently had none.

Their journey had not been fruitless, though. By observing their behavior in the sky, Matt had been able to determine that the vast majority of airborne Super Leaves were being drawn to a certain place in the kingdom. He and Chikorita promptly decided to follow, and the trail led them to the fortress they were now at.

_Bowser has to be up to something,_ Matt thought. _The fact that the airspace they're being drawn to is that of a freaking _castle_ is about as coincidental as a Poké Ball's ability to catch Pokémon._

"Shouldn't we have hit some enemies by now?" Chikorita asked as they continued to follow the perimeter of the fortress. "Like, not battled, but at least encountered some?"

"You're right," said Matt, looking around him. "No one's here except for you and me. Not even a single piece of artillery's come to stop us yet."

He looked a short way further down the fortress wall. A black, horizontal pipe stood mounted to an identically-colored base, planted in the ground and with a white skull adorned on each of its sides, guarding a large square opening in the wall behind it. A puff of smoke came out of the back opening, and a Bullet Bill glided slowly out of the other, flying directly for the human/Pokémon pair.

"Something tells me this isn't your average fortress," said Chikorita.

"Tell me about it," Matt added, sidestepping to let the Bullet Bill pass. "A _Bill Blaster_ guarding the entrance? Exactly what do they have stashed here that's _that_ invaluable to them?"

"Yeah, not even a fortress holding the _princess_ gets that kind of security." Chikorita stared at the cannon in bewilderment as she and Matt continued their approach.

Another puff of smoke came from the blaster and a second Bullet Bill was launched in their direction. Right as it reached Matt and Chikorita, it spun itself in midair, forcing them to jump away in haste as it tried to strike them with a Tanooki Tail protruding out of its exhaust.

"Oh, you've GOT to be kidding me!" Matt exclaimed as he recovered. "How in the frickin' world does a Bullet Bill gain a Tanooki Tail!? What's next, Tanooki-tailed Cheep-Cheeps?"

The sound of a burning fuse caught Chikorita's attention. She looked up just in time to rush out from under a Bob-omb fluttering down on her. It landed on the grass and exploded harmlessly a few seconds later.

"Nah, I'd say Tanooki-tailed Bob-ombs are what's next," said the Pokémon.

Matt looked up the wall. Several more Bob-ombs adorned with the striped tails were perched on top of it, some of which were jumping off to slowly come down on the duo.

"Let's go!" he said, breaking out in a run for the entrance. Chikorita followed as the Tail Bob-ombs touched down and went off behind them.

The grassy soil ended at the opening in the wall, becoming a grey-blue and white diamond-patterned stone path that snaked across the surface of a lava lake enclosed within the huge walls in the rough shape of a question mark, bordered by two adjacent lines of similarly-colored bricks that had a more bluish tint to them. A ? Block floated over the first turn, with three Hammer Bros. guarding the path. Past that, a pair of Tail Goombas were mulling about on the next section, before the path turned again and led even further out into the molten sea, all the way to the far wall. At this point, it turned a third time and ran along its bottom for a significant distance before abruptly stopping less than a third of the way down. Three sheet metal platforms with diamond cutout patterns stood on small steel columns over the lava to serve as stepping stones from there to a stone island housing a blue button with a white "P" on the top. Behind the lake and its delimiting back wall, a circular tower even more massive than those dotting the castle walls rose far into the sky to meet the airborne Super Leaves.

"Call me crazy," said Matt, pointing at the tower, "but I get the feeling that that's where we have to go."

"I would call you crazi _er,_ " said Chikorita with a good-natured grin. "You're already crazy."

"...You got a point." Matt nodded with a straight face. "C'mon, let's go figure out what they're doing and ruin it."

He led the way, running down the pathway for the trio of Hammer Bros. The elite Koopa Troop soldiers began hurling hammers as they approached, but Matt and Chikorita weaved through the volley and delivered a stomp to the head and a Vine Whip to the gut, respectively, of two of them. The third barely evaded Chikorita's target hitting him in the head on its way into the surrounding lava, and jumped away before either she or her owner could attempt to hit him again, retreating down the walkway while continuing his hammer barrage.

Chikorita rushed after the lone survivor while continuing to duck and dodge, but Matt took a second to jump and strike the nearby ? Block. He expected a Super Leaf to come out, but instead got a white boomerang with eyes and a blue stripe attached to a flower stem.

_A Boomerang Flower?_ he thought.

He looked across the lake. Chikorita had chased her Hammer Bro down the path almost to where it met the wall.

"Chikorita!" he shouted. "Hold up a sec!"

He grabbed the Boomerang Flower and rushed after her. The item disappeared out of his hand as a shell and helmet identical to what the Hammer Bros. wore materialized around his body, save for the grey color scheme. Reaching the Tail Goombas, Matt dashed past the first and threw a boomerang to dispel the second.

By this time, Chikorita and the Hammer Bro she was pursuing had reached the far wall. After a couple more hops, the Hammer Bro finally stopped his retreat short of reaching the end of the stone walkway. Chikorita skidded to a halt in front of him and wound up her head leaf to throw a Razor Leaf or two. Matt rounded the corner behind her and ran for them, but the Hammer Bro gave the order before he reached them.

"Get her, boys!"

Chikorita and Matt looked up in time to see four more Bros. come down from above and land in a circle around Chikorita. Each of them were dressed identically to the Hammer Bro and Matt, with the exception once again being color; these Bros.' armor was colored deep blue instead of green or grey.

"Chikorita, hit the deck!" Matt ordered.

The Leaf Pokémon dropped to her stomach as several boomerangs flew over her head. She stayed put as Matt rushed in and threw a boomerang of his own, knocking two of the Boomerang Bros. out and leaving her the room to jump back up and dash out of the way of a hammer.

Matt stomped one of the leftover Boomerang Bros. and jumped over the last one to land on the Hammer Bro. He turned to watch the bro he had skipped fall to Chikorita's Razor Leaf.

"Phew!" she said, taking a second to catch her breath. "Thanks for your help."

"Yeah, I didn't want you getting in over your head," said Matt. "That kind of thing's fine if you're talking boomerangs, but it's not fine if you're talking trouble. There's a _lot_ more to taking down a foe than just staying on their tail. It took me a while to realize that for the first time, and I had to pay a pretty good price for not realizing it sooner."

Chikorita cringed mildly. "Ooh, what happened?" 

But Matt said nothing. In his short monologue, he had turned his head away from her and was simply staring out over the lava lake.

* * *

"Well, she glides around the globe, and she'll flimflam every nation."  
"She's a double-dealing diva with a taste for thievery."  
"Her itinerary's loaded up with moving violations."  
"Tell me, Where...in the World...is..."  
"...uh-Carmen Sandiego?"

Gentle winds blew in all directions across a grass field with rolling hills as Shinx, Matt, Susan, and Dale boogied incoherently step-by-step down a path that cut straight through it, the latter three singing the theme to one of the television shows about their favorite thief. The trio was certainly not going to win a dance award anytime soon, but their singing was getting better; although he still had room for improvement, Matt was finally coming in with Carmen's name at close to the right time, and he, Dale, and Susan were now trading off the lines of the verses almost flawlessly, not to mention that his two friends were also able to ask the ending question in actual harmony this time around.

"That was much better!" said Susan. "A couple more times and we'll have it all down!"

"Now if only we could just get the non-singing part down..." Matt said.

"That's exactly what we're gonna work on next," said Dale. "Practice helped us get the verses right; it'll help us get the rest of the song right, too. Just you wait, we'll be giving the best performance of the best Carmen theme in no time!"

Shinx jumped up and down in place while yipping its name in agreement for a few seconds, but stopped after realizing that Matt and Susan were not doing likewise. They were simply looking at Dale, blinking their eyes a couple of times.

"...I'm sorry, you think _Where in the World_ has the best theme song?" said Matt.

Dale stared incredulously back at Matt. " _Everyone_ thinks _Where in the World_ has the best theme song! I mean, it has a group of singers...singing all by themselves! No accompaniment, no instruments, just people voices providing all the music in the show! How amazing is that?"

"Okay, that _is_ really cool," Matt conceded, "but I think _Where in Time_ 's theme song's better fit for setting the right...chasing mood...thingy; i-it makes you feel the way you wanna feel when you're chasing bad guys. Plus, it's got the Chronoskimmer's Engine Crew doing all that awesome dancing!"

"...Mmm, you _do_ have a point with the dancing, I'll give you that much," said Dale, shaking his finger in agreement.

"No way, you're both wrong!" Susan said. "The best theme song belongs to _Where on Earth!_ "

"What!?" Matt's jaw dropped.

"Oh c'mon, that one barely even has any singing!" protested Dale.

"It doesn't _need_ singing!" Susan retorted. "It's a modern take on a piece of _classical_ music. That's super-awesome all by itself!"

"...This is true," said Dale. "The other two definitely can't say they're anything like that."

"Yeah, you're right," said Matt. "We shouldn't count out _Where on Earth_ just because it doesn't have a theme song with normal singing. Besides, there's one thing about _Where on Earth_ that I absolutely like a lot more than both _Where in the World_ AND _Where in Time._ "

"What's that?" Susan asked.

"Its version of The Chief."

"Wh—Are you kidding me!?" Dale exclaimed. "How can you like _Where on Earth_ 's Chief? That guy's such a huge jerk!"

"No he's not!" Matt protested. "He's funny!"

"No way; he's a jerk," Dale repeated. "Have you listened to some of the things he can say when you're playing _Junior Detective?_ 'Well, I like hard workers! They're so much fun to sit back and watch!' 'And just remember, if you happen to fail...Nyah nya-nyah nya-nyah, nyah!' 'The difference between a good detective and a great detective is...well, my opinion.' He's lazy, makes fun of you, and he's bigheaded... _and_ a big head! Not even Carmen does things like that with her V.I.L.E. villains!"

"If I remember correctly, he said he was kidding right after the first two of those," said Susan.

"I don't care. I like the normal Chief better." Dale folded his arms with a huff.

"The 'normal' Chief?" said Matt, cocking an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Dale said. "Y'know, the lady with browner skin and short, really frizzy black hair? Acts very rigid and proper and does it _without_ being bigheaded?"

"Oh yeah, her!" said Matt in realization. "I know who you're talking about. Yeah, it was just harder for me to figure it out 'cause you didn't say her name."

"That's the thing; I don't think she _has_ one," said Dale.

A shadow passed over the path. The three kids looked up to see a firefly-like insect hovering over their heads. The creature was primarily sky blue, lavender, and black, with a yellow area under its head. It had identically-yellow antennae and eyes that were a darker blue than what it had on its body.

"Hey, check it out, an Illumise!" said Susan, pointing at the Pokémon.

"Ooooh!" Matt stared at it with wide, awestruck eyes. He had never seen this Pokémon before outside of textbook pictures at school, so this was something to get excited about.

"Strange that we'd see one here at home in the middle of the day," Dale thought. "Illumise usually live in forests and only come out at night."

The Illumise flitted around skittishly overhead for a few seconds. Matt was about to ask why it seemed spooked when a shrill bird call split the air.

_"Skaaarrr!"_

_"Shinx! Shinx!"_ Shinx spun around to face the opposite direction, barking in alarm. Matt followed and spotted a large bird swooping down out of the sky. Its body was almost completely silver-grey except for the red on the undersides of its wings, the grey-blue coloring of its neck, talons, and tail, and the yellow sclera of its eyes.

"Whoa, it's a Skarmory!" Dale exclaimed.

"And it's diving straight for us!" Matt shouted in panic, pointing at the Pokémon.

The group scrambled to get out of the way, running and diving off the path onto their stomachs just before Skarmory hit it, sending a cloud of dust exploding up and out.

Matt rolled over onto his back after a second of lying face-down. Neither Skarmory nor Illumise were visible; all he saw was the veil of dirt floating around him.

"What was that, a Sand-Attack!?" asked Susan, looking up from the ground.

"I think so," said Dale, already standing back up.

Matt and Susan stood back up themselves as the dust cloud dissipated. Once it did, they saw Illumise on the grass brushing sand out of its eyes, and Skarmory soaring through the air some distance away, circling around to come back towards them. As it did, Illumise finished recovering, turned to face its attacker as it approached, and charged straight back at it, ramming itself head-on into the Armor Bird Pokémon and knocking it backwards a short way.

_Nice Tackle,_ Matt thought.

"Skarmory, Air Cutter!" shouted a voice.

Matt turned his head in the direction he had heard the voice originate from, back the way that he and his group had initially come.

On top of a hill at the edge of the field, close to the path, stood a human that he guessed was Skarmory's Trainer. The man had dark green hair and was dressed almost completely in grey, with a darker, slightly greenish-grey vest on over his shirt and a look of determination on his face.

Matt went back to watching the battle as Skarmory's wings glowed white and it began flapping them more rapidly, sending blue, spinning, "S"-shaped bursts of energy out at Illumise. The Firefly Pokémon zipped back and forth through the air to evade the attacks before dashing in for what looked to be another Tackle, except that it was moving much faster than before.

_It's Quick Attack,_ Matt realized as the attack connected, knocking Skarmory out of the sky and sending it sprawling across the grass.

"Wow, that actually looked really effective," said Susan.

"Yeah, I thought Steel-types like Skarmory were resistant to Normal attacks," Matt put in.

"That Illumise might have Tinted Lens," Dale said with a hand on his chin.

"What's that?" Matt glanced at his friend, but Dale seemed too focused on the battle.

Illumise raced through the air towards Skarmory as it attempted to get back up, slamming into it again before it could react.

"Stay strong, Skarmory!" said the Trainer. "Use Sand-Attack again!"

The Armor Bird Pokémon wasted no time in recovering from Illumise's attack, and then used a wing to scoop some dirt off the ground and throw it at its opponent.

Illumise flew up to evade the attack, and then swooped in for a Tackle.

"Use Swift!"

Skarmory opened its mouth and began firing several yellow stars out of it. Illumise braced itself as the stars struck it over and over.

After the attack concluded, Illumise relented and simply stared at its foe, its eyes wide and watery and its mouth pulled down into a sad pout.

"Wait a sec," said Matt. "What's Illumise doing now?"

"It's using Charm," Susan realized. "Trying to get Skarmory to let its guard down."

Skarmory stared back at Illumise. Nothing seemed to happen for the first few seconds, until Skarmory's Trainer gave another command.

"Use Swift again!"

Skarmory did so, but the attack looked and seemed substantially weaker than before.

Illumise braced again to take the softened attack, and then rushed in and hit Skarmory with a powerful Quick Attack

"Wow, Illumise's on a roll!" said Dale. "This Pokémon could prove quite the challenge for that guy!"

"Skarmory, get out of there!" shouted its Trainer. "Use Agility and come back towards me!"

Just before Illumise landed another Quick Attack, Skarmory vanished into thin air. Illumise whirled around as its foe reappeared back into the air, and proceeded to give chase while Skarmory seemed to disappear and reappear several more times in different locations over the field.

"Are we sure that Skarmory's using Agility and not Teleport?" asked Susan, watching Skarmory continue to go in and out of sight while leading Illumise on its pursuit.

"Skarmory can't learn Teleport; that attack's Agility, no matter what it might look like," Dale replied. "I'm wondering more about why that Trainer hasn't been having Skarmory put up more of a fight. It's clear he wants to catch Illumise; shouldn't he be trying to weaken it instead of going on the defensive?"

By this time, the two Pokémon had moved well away from the group. Skarmory soared over the head of its Trainer, who was now holding some kind of tubular device over his shoulder.

"Wait, what in Arceus' name is that?" Matt said.

The Trainer pulled the trigger on a handle attached to the machine, and a net tethered to it by a rope shot out the front end, capturing Illumise as it attempted to follow Skarmory over the human.

The kids gasped.

"Oh my goodness!" said Susan as the Pokémon struggled and cried for help. "He used it to snatch up Illumise!"

"...That still doesn't tell me what that is," said Matt after a pause.

"It's a capturing device that's used a lot among Pokémon poachers," said Dale, his voice low and tinged with dread. "That person doesn't want to catch Illumise because he wants to keep it; he wants to catch it so that he can sell it to somebody else for money!"

"Excellent!" said the man. "I got an Illumise with Tinted Lens."

His Skarmory came back and hovered above him. "C'mon, Skarmory," he said to it. "Let's head back and tell our colleagues we can _finally_ return to base."

The poacher turned and headed back into the city around the field.

"Looks like I suspected right," said Dale. "He went after that Illumise because it has Tinted Lens."

"And what _is_ that?" Matt asked insistently.

"You don't know?" Dale tilted his head.

Matt and Susan shook their own heads.

"Oh, I guess I thought you did."

"Well, we don't, so quit keeping us in the dark," Susan said. "Tinted Lens is...?"

"It's an Ability that lets a Pokémon double its Attack power when using a move that's at a type disadvantage against its opponent," Dale explained. "Using a Fire-type move on a Water-type, for instance, would usually only do half the regular damage, but with Tinted Lens, it'd do normal damage."

"Sounds useful," said Matt with a nod.

"It is," said Dale. "It's also the rarer of the two Abilities that Illumise can have, which I'll bet is partly why that thief went after it."

"The thief!" Susan exclaimed, remembering the original subject of their discussion. "We gotta do something to save Illumise and stop him from stealing any more Pokémon!"

"Should we go find Officer Jenny and tell her what we saw?" Dale wondered.

"I'm not sure we have time; the crook's already on the move, and he might be totally gone by the time we find her," said Matt. "...Hey, here's an idea: what if we go catch him and save Illumise ourselves?"

Dale and Susan stared at him.

"Do you think we could really do that?" Susan asked."

"Yeah, I do, actually," said Matt. "Think of it this way: the three of us have put more V.I.L.E. villains behind bars at school than any other student. Every single one of them is a thief that can steal not just regular things like artifacts, jewelry, or Pokémon, but things that you wouldn't think would ever be able to _be_ stolen in the first place: the _entire ruins_ that an artifact was in; the _shininess_ of a gem; _every single one_ of a given Pokémon in a region; all of that region's electrical power; all of that _region._ It's amazing what V.I.L.E. can successfully make off with."

_"Shinx."_ His Pokémon nodded thoughtfully.

"But even with those amazing thievery abilities," Matt continued, "not a single villain is any match for us. Even Carmen Sandiego herself, who I'm sure could steal both Arceus itself _and_ its powers if she wanted to, wasn't able to get away from Dale, and it's only a matter of time until she won't be able to get away from me or Susan anymore, either."

"Did Carmen actually try to do that in any of her games?" Susan asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"I don't think so," said Dale, "but I agree with Matt; if she wanted to, she definitely could."

"Yes, exactly!" said Matt. "She is the best thief in the whole universe, and we can still beat her. So something like this? Stopping some normal bad guy from stealing just a single Pokémon? That should be a piece of cake for us if we just stay cool, work together, and do the same things we do to catch Carmen and her crooks."

Susan's eyes drifted upward to face the sky as she nodded to herself, while Dale stared at the ground in front of him, a hand on his chin.

"Besides, it should be even easier than a normal ACME case because we already know who we're looking for and what he looks like," said Matt. "That means we don't have to spend time putting together a warrant or wanted poster. It's like half the work of catching him's already been done for us. C'mon, what do you guys think?"

Dale and Susan looked at each other for a few seconds, before turning back to Matt.

"I'm in," said Dale with a confident smirk.

"Me too!" Susan nodded. "Let's go save Illumise!"

"Alright, let's go!" Matt proclaimed. "We haven't a moment to lose!"

They rushed back up the path the way they came, and once out of the field, turned and ran into the city following the same path that the Pokémon poacher had taken.

* * *

Something touched Matt on the cheek. He jumped, almost off the path and into the lava, arms flailing to fend off an enemy that wasn't there. After landing on the edge of the stone platform and flailing some more to regain his balance, he looked to see the end of Chikorita's Vine Whip hovering at his eye level.

"Sorry," she said. "It looked like I lost you."

Matt snorted while glancing at the bubbling magma. "Lost me how?"

"Lost you to your thoughts," Chikorita said, retracting her vine. "I tapped you to bring you back, but you went full out 'jump out of your frying pan of thoughts, almost fall in the fire' instead."

"Yeah..." Matt stared at his Pokémon companion for a little bit. "C'mon, let's keep going."

They went on down the path, stopping at the edge where it ended and eyeing the first metal platform rising out of the lava. Matt and Chikorita took a few steps back, before making a running jump over the lava and landing on the platform.

It began to sink.

"Aah!" Chikorita yelped, feeling the waves of heat radiating from the boiling volcanic rock underneath her.

"Shoot!" Matt immediately jumped forward to the next platform.

Chikorita tried to follow, but had to stop herself when a duo of fireballs with eyes jumped straight up out of the lava between the two platforms, reaching over Matt's height before falling back in where they had appeared. Fortunately, without Matt on it, the platform was able to rise back to its original position, keeping her out of the lava.

She looked over at Matt, jumping up and down continuously on the next platform to keep it from sinking too low under his weight.

"You...all...right?" he asked, punctuating each word with a hop.

"I think so," Chikorita replied.

The fireballs leapt out of the lake a second time.

"Stupid Podoboos!" she muttered under her breath as they disappeared under the surface again. She took the opportunity to jump over and meet Matt.

"Just...one...more," he said, eyeing the last platform between them and the island with the blue "P" button. "Let's...-a...go!"

Matt jumped to the final platform. Unlike the first two, this one was sturdy and would not sink. Chikorita took this as a sign to join him, until she watched him look down at the churning lava under the platform, let out an "Uh-oh", and quickly jump ahead again.

A large magma geyser erupted up through the metal platform.

Chikorita exhaled tensely. Being a Grass-type, she could suffer a burn very easily, and thus was naturally averse to fire, lava, and pretty much everything else that was hot enough to burn a living thing. Castles with lava were among her least favorite places to be; whenever she was in one, it always seemed as if she was one misstep, slip, trip, or fall away from a scalding lava bath. At least she didn't have to deal with this sort of environment very often, given that Princess Peach constantly tried to prevent Matt from venturing into such perilous settings himself, even if she only seemed to succeed about half the time.

The geyser slowly gave out and fell back under the magma surface. Instantly, Chikorita jumped onto the last metal platform, and then ran and jumped again to land by Matt's feet.

She stared at the blue button sitting in the center of the platform. "Is this a new model of the P Switch? What would Bowser think was wrong with the old one?"

"Bowser doesn't think, Chikorita," said Matt. "And neither does the Koopa Troop. Everything they do is pointless. _Everything._ "

He stomped the button down with his foot. The blue switch turned solid red and several Coins appeared in a circle around it. Immediately afterward, the platform rumbled before shooting upwards from the lava lake.

"Ooh, look, Coins!" Chikorita exclaimed.

"Coins are always good," said Matt, picking up the currency along with his Pokémon while the platform continued traveling up the wall.

It came to a halt at the top shortly after they had collected all the Coins. Matt looked up and blinked in surprise at what lay before him.

A second lake of lava stretched out before him, along with another pathway running over its surface, this one solid white stone with a purple carpet over it and bordered on both sides once again by bluish-grey stone bricks, though these were thinner than those of the previous route and were only one line thick. The Super Leaves populating the atmosphere were now well within their reach at this higher altitude, with several even floating too low and touching the lake surface, getting instantly consumed in puffs of steam. Further still down the lake, the massive circular tower they had been working towards sat on top of a square-shaped ground floor, each corner housing a double-height tower just like the ones on the outer perimeter, flying black flags with the same skull image that had been on the Bill Blaster at the entrance.

In between the tower and the path that Matt and Chikorita were using was another path over the surface, this one looking much more natural than their own path by way of being composed entirely of round stones similar in color to the bricks on the edges of theirs. A line of Goombas was stationed on it, slowly moving forward. One by one, each waddling mushroom in the line took a Super Leaf that floated down out of the air, sprouted a Tanooki Tail, and then moved on to let the Goomba behind it do the same.

Standing at the point where the transformations were taking place directing the process was a large, hulking Koopa. Several long tan spikes protruded out from his shell, the color matching that of his underbelly, mouth, and snout. Most of the rest of his body was yellow except for his shell and top of his head, which were green. He wore five thick black bands accentuated with grey spikes, two on each arm and one around his neck. His red eyes radiated malevolence, and his red-orange hair and eyebrows waved ominously in the wind between the two horns on his head.

"Matt, look!" said Chikorita. "Do you see that?"

"Yeah," he replied. "How in the heck does this thin wall not break under the weight of the lava?"

Chikorita's head shot around to her owner, who was fixated on the wall of the lava lake.

"No, not that!" she hissed, grabbing his arm with a Vine Whip to get his attention. "Out there!"

Matt gazed out over the lake at the huge creature standing with the Goombas.

"Bowser," he said in mild surprise, pulling his smartphone out of his pocket. "Guess that explains why all the Super Leaves are here, why so many enemies have Tanooki Tails...and pretty much anything else relating to the Super Leaves."

He tapped the screen right as a Goomba transformed while Bowser pointed down the line. A camera shutter sound came from the electronic device.

"I'll make sure to share this with the others when we get back," he said, putting his phone away. "But for now, let's see what we can do about putting a stop to...whatever the heck this is."

They started to head down their route, but they didn't get far before something slammed down in front of them from overhead. Chikorita jumped back in shock while Matt simply stood and stared at the object in front of him. It was a large stone ringed with spikes and a grimacing face.

"...Thwomps," said Matt in his flat, deadpan voice. "Wonderful."

The Thwomp began to rise back up, leaving a window of opportunity for Matt and Chikorita to duck under it and keep moving. Matt did a cursory glance to see if there were any more waiting. And there were, a short way down the path following a sharp turn to the left, except that these were moving forward as they rose off the ground before coming back down and pounding the path again.

Matt cocked an eyebrow upon seeing this behavior. He had never seen Thwomps that didn't simply drop onto the same place over and over, and wondered how these Thwomps were able to move around. He stood and watched them for a short time, and finally got his answer when, after traveling a certain distance, one of them turned around, giving him a perfect view of the Tanooki Tail sprouting out its back.

"Tail Thwomps," he said. "Even wonderful-er."

He kept walking until he came to the turn. A pile of Brick Blocks sat in the corner, one of which was colored a darker brown than the others.

Chikorita observed the abnormal block as she and Matt approached, but Matt ignored it, focusing instead on Bowser and the Goombas. However, right as he reached the path's edge, the dark block sprouted two white eyes.

Chikorita's eyes went wide. "Matt! The block pile!" she called out.

Matt turned just in time to see the block first glare at him, and then jump at him, swinging a Tanooki Tail of its own. He sidestepped the ambush and threw a boomerang to destroy it.

"...Tanooki-tailed Brick Blocks." Matt's voice started out deadpan and bitter, but it quickly turned to partly-incoherent yelling. " _...Tanooki-tailed BRICK BLOCKS._ I can't eve—I don't even know what to say to that!"

Chikorita watched her owner fume for a second, before a deep chuckle made both of them look back down the lake.

Bowser was no longer directing Goombas. Instead, he was staring across the lake directly at them, a smug grin on his face.

_**Oh, crap...**_ Matt thought, just before Bowser inhaled and spit a big fireball in their direction.

The duo leapt in opposite directions to avoid the attack and then took off together down the path. It wasn't long, though, before they hit their first Tail Thwomp, just after it landed on the ground, and had to stop.

Bowser hurdled into position, Tail Goombas scattering to avoid being trampled under him, and immediately sent another fireball their way. It headed straight for Chikorita.

"Chikorita, watch out!" Matt jumped in front of his Pokémon and took a direct hit from the flaming projectile. It vanished, as did the Boomerang Suit he had been wearing.

The Tail Thwomp slowly floated up again, and Chikorita wasted no time in slipping underneath it and resuming her run. Matt performed a somersault under the Thwomp to send himself through and follow Chikorita that much quicker. Bowser continued to jump along his path in pursuit of the Defender and his companion, breathing fireballs one after the other, but the two were able to stay ahead of the onslaught, even clearing a second Tail Thwomp before it could fall and flatten them.

Beyond that, the end of the path they were on was visible some distance away. But while the path stopped, the purple carpet under their feet didn't, instead taking a turn and leading right up to the side edge. Adjacent to that point was a floor of Brick Blocks sitting in the lava, connecting their path to Bowser's, which also stopped abruptly at the Brick Block bridge. A few of the darker Brick Blocks sat unassumingly dormant atop the normal ones. Several big pillars, made primarily of light brown brick with orange accents and a solid top and base, also dotted the bridge's vicinity, some rising out of the lava, others sitting around the edges of either path.

"What's with the pillars?" Chikorita wondered as they approached the hairpin turn.

Matt started to respond when he heard his smartphone start to ring. Not the blaring klaxon ringtone that heralded a call alerting him to an urgent situation requiring his immediate intervention; just an upbeat tune signaling a normal call.

He exhaled in frustration. " _Wonderful_ time for a call," he thought sardonically.

Still running from Bowser's fireballs, he managed to get the device out of his pocket without dropping it and tapped the "Answer" command, trying his best to focus on the call and where he was going in equal capacity.

"...Goombella?" he said in surprise upon seeing her and Parakarry appear on-screen.

"Matt?" she asked back with a blink of her eyes. The Goomba archæologist and Paratroopa mail carrier were both at the keyboard of the videophone installed inside the Post Fortress back in Matt's home village.

Parakarry moved in and took a closer look at the videophone monitor, trying to discern what was in the background from what little of it was not obscured by Matt's head. "Are...are you and Chikorita all right? What's going on out there?"

They watched in silence as Matt appeared to jump forward, followed by something yellow and fiery streaking across behind him.

_"...My hands are a little full at the moment; I'll get back to you,"_ he replied.

The screen went blank before either Parakarry or Goombella could reply.

Matt put his smartphone away, surveying the scene as he and Chikorita continued to flee from the Koopa King's onslaught.

"C'mon, over the Brick Block bridge," he said to his Pokémon as they reached it. "Then it's back the way we came."

Matt led the way over the short connecting segment. The dark Brick Blocks came to life with eyes and Tanooki Tails as Matt came into their line of sight, but a couple of somersaults over the ground and coming out of them with a leap got him past them before they could actually jump up and attack. Chikorita, however, did not have the ability to move as fast, and the sentient blocks wound up cutting her off before she could pass, forcing her to stop and either take them out with a Razor Leaf or wait for an opening in their attack before continuing. By the time Matt reached the other path, she had only made it about halfway across.

Matt glanced back to watch Chikorita's progress for a second, but Bowser quickly commanded his attention again with another onslaught of fireballs. Trying to stay calm, Matt sidestepped the hot spheres of fire as they sailed past before getting ready to rush forward and finally take the fight to the Koopa King.

But before he could start, Bowser made another jump into the air. One much higher than what he had been doing to keep up with his unwanted guests. And his target was Matt.

The Defender rushed backwards several paces to get out of the impact zone, but even without a direct hit from him, Bowser slammed down feet-first onto the ground with such a strong force that Matt was thrown off his feet and into the air. Chikorita and several of the pillars standing around them were also dealt the same hand.

Matt landed on his back, with just enough of his wits still about him to roll to the side and let a pillar hit the ground next to him and shatter into rubble. He glanced at Chikorita as she recovered and then scrambled out from under the landing area of a pillar herself.

The falling stone structure crashed right through the bridge, shattering several of the Brick Blocks comprising it before disappearing under the surface of the lava lake. A couple more pillars came down out of the air after it, each one striking and taking out more of the bridge. With the way forward now smashed, Chikorita turned and ran back towards the path that she and Matt had come in on.

A pillar coming out of the lava next to the bridge tilted and slowly fell onto it, slicing through the blocks like an ax. Chikorita leapt over the resultant gap and rushed off the bridge onto solid ground as the Brick Blocks continued to be further and further destroyed by the falling debris.

By the time everything had finished raining down a few seconds later, more than ¾ of the bridge's material was gone, leaving only a sparse, haphazard collection of Brick Blocks sitting between the ends of the two paths. Chikorita stood stranded at the end of one path, while Matt was left with Bowser at the end of the other.

_Gah,_ Matt thought, looking at the Koopa King standing over him. _I never stopped to think about potential resistance or what my strategy for actually taking down Bowser would be._

He jumped as Bowser spun around and swung his tail in an attempt to trip him. _How is it that I never remember to consider the big picture until after I'm in too deep?_

* * *

"Excuse me?" Dale asked an adult sitting at an outside table eating her lunch. "My friends and I are looking for someone. He's got green hair, a grey outfit, and a Skarmory. Where did he go?"

"I'm sorry," said the woman. "I haven't seen anyone like that."

"Huh..." Dale stared bemusedly off into space. This was the third time he had asked someone about the Pokémon poacher they were tracking and come up with an amount of information identical to what he would get when he had traveled to the wrong location.

He turned away from the woman and walked down the street. A few buildings later, he found himself at his home city's Poké Mart. The doors slid open, and Matt and Shinx came out onto the street.

"I can't believe this, but I've got nothing," Dale said to his friend. "What about you?"

Matt shook his head. "I asked, like, seven grown-ups in there. Nobody saw the suspect."

_"Shinx..."_ His Pokémon stared sadly at the ground.

"This is so weird," said Dale. "On the computer, _everyone's_ seen the suspect, so long as you've traveled to the right place. But here _we_ are, knowing without a doubt that our crook was here and having already asked, like, twice the people you _ever_ find in any one place in the games, and we still have absolutely no idea where he went."

"I hope Susan's having better luck than us," Matt said. "If there's one difference I know between real life and computer games, it's that the computer can't forget the clues it gives you, but real people can. The longer we go with no lead, the less possible heeding Illumise's cries for help will be."

"You should've said 'the less we'll be able to heed the Illumise that's in need'," Dale said with a grin. "You would've rhymed. Three times."

They walked away from the Poké Mart and down another road. Various people and Pokémon were wandering about all over the place, and yet none of them were the ones they were looking for.

Shinx strayed a short distance away from Matt and Dale as they passed a stand of Pokémon plush dolls. It approached a particular one down by the ground, a Growlithe with a red collar, and sniffed at it.

_"Shinx! Shinx!"_ it said to the doll, making Matt and Dale turn around and walk back towards it.

"Oh cool, check it out!" Matt exclaimed. "A Stretch the Crime Growlithe plush!"

Dale smiled as Shinx continued to stare at the plush. "Shinx really seems to like it, too," he observed.

"Yeah," said Matt. "I think Shinx looks up to Stretch, actually."

He knelt down and spoke to Shinx. "Isn't that right? You'd love nothing more than to grow up doing the same exact thing Stretch does?"

The Flash Pokémon looked up at its owner and nodded.

"Well, that's what we're gonna be doing once we find our crook," said Dale before looking around him. "So where's Susan?"

Matt looked up at the sky. A large cloud was currently passing in front of the sun, completely obscuring it. He watched and waited as it continued to drift, eventually moving enough that the sun began to peek out from behind it again.

Matt joined Dale in scanning the crowd as the sunrays intensified. It didn't take long before they spotted a bright light shining in the middle of it.

"Ah!" said Matt. "Right there!"

They headed towards the light and caught sight of its source, Susan's hair, just as she turned away from a storefront within the rows of buildings. She spotted the two boys and ran over to meet them.

"Did you get any clues?" Dale asked.

"Yes I did, actually!" Susan said excitedly. "The man I was just talking to said our suspect bought a tray of Moomoo Milk from his store around seven minutes before we came. So I asked him where the suspect went."

"And what'd he say?" asked Matt.

"According to him, our crook was complaining about how hard Illumise are to find and how he'd been working for so long to catch one that he and some friends finally decided to camp out in the one place where that was most likely to happen."

"Aww," Matt said.

"What?" Susan looked at her friend, confused.

"I was waiting for a pun in the clue..."

"Okay..." Dale put a hand on his chin and stared at the ground. "So where's the one spot in this region where you can find Illumise in the wild? Ugh, I know I've heard it before..."

"Wait a sec!" Matt exclaimed. "What about the woods east of here? I think you can find Illumise out that way."

"Why do you say that?" asked Susan.

"It was something that I came across while looking up other information on our region during an earlier ACME case," said Matt, "but it happened so long ago that I don't know if I'm remembering it right."

"No, I think you are," said Dale. "I seem to recall reading that, too. And that, by the way, is why you shouldn't worry about the trouble you've been having with Carmen, Matt."

"What do you mean?"

"You might not have noticed, but every case we get from the Chief at school has to be solved by taking a piece of information from the clues we get and using them to figure out what it's referring to," Dale said. "That's all there is to catching Carmen and V.I.L.E., really, and you just did that very thing right now."

"You're right, I did!" said Matt, beaming.

Dale gave Matt a hearty pat on the back. "Alright, let's go find that crook!" he proclaimed, leading Susan and Matt down the road on a course for leaving the city.

Half an hour later, they were well inside their destination. Lush trees towered over them on all sides, their dense canopies blocking out the sky. A few rays of sun slipped through cracks in the leaves and fell on the grass below. Various Pokémon, mostly Bug-types, flew through the air in different directions, as did the occasional gust of wind, making the grass and tree branches sway.

"Okay, you Pokémon poacher, where did you go?" Dale said to himself, walking along a path that snaked through the woods with the other two by his side and Shinx a few steps ahead, sniffing the dirt as it walked.

"How do we move on?" said Susan. "We don't know where the suspect went from here, and there's no one for us to talk to, so how are we gonna gather clues to stay on his trail?"

"I thought we were already on the crook's trail," said Matt, staring at the path they were walking along. "Well, unless he decided not to use this trail in the first place..."

"Not all clues come from people, you guys," said Dale, carefully scanning his surroundings. "Sometimes a crook will drop a notebook or a receipt or a ticket or some other piece of paper with a clue on it. Things like that've helped me _lots_ of times when I'm building a warrant."

They walked on down the path. Matt almost glazed over a portion of foliage they were passing by, but an abnormal blue color within it caught his eye.

"Hey, what's that?" he said.

Shinx stopped and doubled back as Matt moved closer to investigate the object. He knelt down and picked up the object before turning around so that Dale and Susan could look at it as well.

"Looks like some kind of drink tray," said Susan.

Dale looked closely at some words embossed on the side of the tray. "...It's a tray for bottles of Moomoo Milk!" he said in excitement.

"Think this was our suspect's?" said Matt.

_"Shinx! Shinx Shinx!"_ Shinx called to the kids from its position at where the tray had been lying. Once it had gotten their attention, the small Pokémon pushed down some of the leaves and plants with its paws, uncovering what was behind it.

A much thinner path branched off from the main one, its presence made hidden by the undergrowth of the forest. Matt could only guess that this was a trail originally blazed by Pokémon, as it was so narrow that maybe a single person would be able travel down it at a time, as opposed to the one they had been walking along, which could easily accompany six or seven people standing side-by-side.

"Cool, a hidden path!" said Dale. "This is just like finding a secret passageway inside a huge house...but, y'know, without the passageway...or the house."

"And look!" Susan dashed a short distance down the path into the woods and picked up something else, turning back and holding it out to Dale and Matt. "An empty bottle of Moomoo Milk! Someone came through here while drinking this!"

"Our thief probably went down this path!" said Matt.

"Let's go!" said Susan, dropping the bottle and going further into the forest. Matt dropped the tray just as quickly and started to follow.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Dale's call made Susan and Matt both skid to a halt and look back at him.

"What's wrong?" Susan asked.

Dale walked forward and picked up both the tray and the bottle off the ground.

"It's not nice to litter."

"Oh, oops," said Matt.

He turned back around and followed Susan down the thin path, Shinx rushing to catch up with him and Dale bringing up the rear.

The narrow trail seemed to go on for a while, taking the trio of kids by several different things: a gathering of several Weedle and Kakuna up in the branches of a shorter-than-normal tree, a small spring frequented by some varying Water-types, a Beautifly and Combee squabbling for pollen from a small patch of flowers...

"Guys, look!"

Matt, Dale, and Shinx all froze. Susan was about three feet away from the trail's terminus, and was pointing at what lay beyond the trees.

The path came out into a small clearing within the woods, in which there was a complete campsite set up. Three tents, one slightly bigger than the other two, were pitched in various spots around the site, with a pop-up canopy standing over a portable table that was set up near the campfire and surrounding stone ring in the middle of the clearing. A device that Matt could only describe as a radio tower-shaped radio stood by the largest tent, connected by a big black wire to an adjacent, independently standing TV antenna.

Several people also inhabited the camp. They were all dressed in the same exact grey outfit and darker, slightly greenish-grey vest as the poacher the kids had been following. Most were just loitering around the clearing, but one was kneeling and managing the large radio, and a few were sitting down at the table eating from the several boxed lunches and bottles of Moomoo Milk sitting in the center.

Most critically, however, the thief who had taken Illumise was among the group, the struggling Firefly Pokémon trapped in a net he held in his hand, a Moomoo Milk bottle in his other hand, and his Skarmory standing by his side.

"Are you seeing this?" Susan asked.

"Totally," said Matt. "Their gloves are half-fingerless! What's up with that?"

Dale glanced at Matt before looking more closely at the robbers. The gloves they were wearing were indeed partially fingerless, fully covering only the ring and little fingers while leaving the middle and index fingers and the thumb completely bare.

_What a weird-looking glove,_ Dale thought.

A burst of static came through the radio. _"Scouting Party 7. Come in, Scouting Party 7."_

"Commander, sir!" said the thief manning it.

_'Sir'?_ Matt thought. _But...that voice sounds like a woman!_

_"Status report,"_ said the voice from the radio.

"Target has been located and captured as of five minutes ago," said the operator. "We've all regrouped here at the command post and are awaiting extraction."

_"Good,"_ said the voice. _"Extract should arrive within two minutes. Keep Illumise secure until then."_

"Yes, sir!"

The radio puffed and went silent.

"Two minutes!?" said Matt. "That's...not very long."

"No, it isn't," said Susan. "We need to catch these crooks right now."

"Well, let's do just that!" said Dale with a pump of his arm.

The group rushed out of the forest into the campsite, going almost as far as the fire ring before stopping.

The adults turned their heads to the visitors upon hearing them. "Who're they?" asked one of the ones seated at the lunch table.

"Stop, thieves!" Dale shouted, pointing dramatically at the group of grown-ups. "You are under arrest!"

The thieves stared blankly back at Dale, who continued to stand and point at them. Matt waited for something else to happen, but all he saw was a passing breeze carrying a few loose leaves through the air.

"...Soooo..." said one of the poachers with a smug grin, "if we're under arrest, where's the people that're gonna do it? Or did you kids plan to arrest us yourselves?"

A few fellow thieves chuckled sinisterly as Dale lowered his arm and exchanged hurried glances with Susan and Matt. The trio had certainly never captured anyone on the computers at school personally; that had always been done by someone else. Someone who was also in the games.

"Sorry," said a second poacher, "but we're not gonna surrender just because you told us to."

As Matt watched, the rest of the thieves began to turn to fully face them, standing up if they hadn't been previously and forming a semicircular line of people, all of them with a menacing grin on their face that didn't sit quite right with the kids. The thief holding Illumise stepped forward, a Poké Ball in his hand.

"This calls for a battle," he said. "C'mon, Skarmory! Let's get rid of these naïve little nitwits!"

Matt took a stunted breath as Skarmory took to the air and flew to a hovering position in front of its Trainer. None of the trio—not him, not Susan, not even Dale—had ever actively participated in a Pokémon Battle before. Nor had any of them yet learned anything substantial about battling. Dale and Susan didn't even own any Pokémon, not even as pets like how Matt's family owned Shinx.

"Don't panic, Matt!" said Susan. "Shinx should do just fine against Skarmory, even by itself, because a Flying-type Pokémon is weak to Electric-type attacks!"

Her words snapped Matt out of his uncertainty. "Oh, right," he said to himself, "I need to choose _my_ Pokémon before the battle can begin."

He turned to his Pokémon. "This is it, Shinx! We're gonna do what you've always wanted to do, right now! We're gonna take down these crooks just like Stretch, Zack, and Ivy! You ready?"

_"Shinx!"_ The Flash Pokémon jumped in euphoric excitement and rushed out in front of its owner, glaring up at Skarmory. Blue electricity began to crackle all around its body.

"Alright, Shinx," Matt said before pointing at his enemies just as vividly as Dale had done. "Use Spark!"

Shinx became wholly enveloped in blue electricity, and it charged forward before taking a leap and slamming itself into Skarmory. The Armor Bird Pokémon was thrust back a short distance, and with it tumbling onto its back, looked as though it might end up completely knocked out of the sky.

But it recovered handily with a backflip and was quickly back in a stable airborne position, unfazed.

_"Shinx!?"_ Shinx stared up in shock at its opponent.

"What in the...!?" Dale's jaw dropped.

"That Spark..." said Matt in disbelief.

"It didn't do a thing!" Susan finished in alarm.

Now it was Skarmory's Trainer's turn to point at the kids. "Skarmory, Air Cutter, let's go!"

Skarmory's wings glowed white and it flapped them hard, sending out a single large "S"-shaped projectile of blue energy.

Susan watched the attack fly through the air at Shinx, but after seeing Matt still dumbfounded by the ineffectiveness of his own attack, took it upon herself to issue a command.

"Dodge it, Shinx, quick!" she yelled.

Shinx began to jump away, but the Air Cutter was too fast and hit it before it could escape. The small cub was thrown to the side and sent rolling several times across the ground.

"Oh no, Shinx!" Matt exclaimed, running over to Shinx as it slowly staggered back to its paws, a look of pain on its face and several scratches over its body.

"Oh man, you got hurt, a lot," said Matt. "...But I...I thought we had the type advantage!"

"Type advantage by itself only gives you so much of an edge," said Skarmory's Trainer. "It won't do you any good when you're up against a Trainer with more powerful Pokémon... _or_ with bigger numbers of Pokémon!"

Matt's breathing grew fast and short, and he fought to not totally freak out as all of the other poachers began to grab and unclip Poké Balls from their belts. The thieves were about to release several more Pokémon into the battle against them.

"Oh, dear Arceus," said Dale in horrifying realization. "What have we just gotten ourselves into?"

Matt tensed and gritted his teeth as the robbers threw their Poké Balls hard.


	7. 1-7: Vēnī, Vīdī, Vīcistī

Chikorita stared across the bubbling lava at Matt and Bowser. The Koopa King had the amateur Defender cornered at the end of the path, and the Leaf Pokémon was stuck at the end of another with no way to cross and help out her owner.

Bowser swiped at Matt with his claws, and Matt jumped to avoid the attack. It seemed as if he was aiming to go over Bowser and land behind him, but he didn't put enough power into his leap and wound up landing spread-eagled over his foe's face instead.

_Oh dear,_ Chikorita thought as Matt immediately grabbed the Koopa King's horns before he could slide off. _This can't end well..._

Moments later, Bowser began shaking his head violently from side to side, trying to throw Matt off. The human held on for a few seconds, but soon lost his grip on one of the horns. It didn't take long before he let go completely.

Matt fell face down onto the stone floor. Bowser immediately jumped into the air above him and made ready to come down with a colossal punch.

"Matt, look out!" Chikorita shouted.

Right before Bowser reached him, Matt somersaulted forward out of his way and let him punch the path behind him. The impact sent several stones flying and left a sizable crater in the ground.

Matt took the opportunity to jump back to his feet and start running down the path away from Bowser, with Chikorita running after him along her own path while trying to figure out how to get herself across the lava to rejoin him. It wouldn't be long before they were back at the point where her path turned and went in a different direction than Matt's.

Bowser began to pursue his foe, breathing fireballs almost like there was no tomorrow. The fiery orbs traveled through the air much faster than either he or Matt could run, and the latter had to carefully zigzag back and forth over the path to avoid getting singed.

"Chikorita, gimme your Vine Whips!" Matt called after they had covered several dozen feet.

"What for?" she asked.

"Just extend them!"

Chikorita hesitated, but decided to comply, extending her vines over the lava to her owner as the two of them ran. Matt was pretty good at thinking on his feet (he had to be, given that he was equally good at executing his plans in inelegant, self-sabotaging fashions); he had probably already thought of a way to bring her over.

Matt reached for the ends of the Vine Whips, and as soon as he had a grasp on them, with a quick flick of his wrist, gave them a hard yank.

Chikorita let out a yelp as she flew off the path and over the lava, right into Matt's arms. He ramped up his running speed as Chikorita recovered from the sudden trip.

* * *

The flashes of white energy coming from the poachers' Poké Balls as they opened and released their inhabitants nearly blinded Matt's eyes inside the dimly lit forest. He covered his eyes with his arm for a second until the glow relented, and then lowered it to see what the thieves had sent out.

A small group of a few different Pokémon stood ready for battle. Five large bats hovered in the air around Skarmory, while a pair of canines howled on the ground below.

The larger dog was almost all black, with a red-orange snout and underbelly, a thin tail tipped with a large, arrowhead-like triangle, and grey horns that curled backwards as they protruded from the head. A horseshoe-shaped ridge ringed its neck in addition to three shorter, semicircular ones on its back that were colored the same. There were two bands on each of its ankles, also colored the same.

The smaller dog looked much furrier, being grey over most of its body except for the black legs, tail, and eyebrows. The brows continued behind the ears and ran down the sides of its back, growing much bigger and fluffier in the process. Its red eyes matched the color of its nose, and were each adjacent to a triangular patch of black fur just underneath.

The bats were primarily blue, except for the wing membranes and the insides of the ears, which were purple. Their huge mouths occupied most of their body, with the eyes and ears only about the size of the fangs they bared. Their legs were thin, as were their feet.

"Houndoom, Mightyena, and Golbat," said Dale, his voice trembling as much as the sweat on his forehead. "...We're in trouble. We are in big, BIG trouble!"

"And our parents haven't even caught us yet!" Matt added, looking at the attack force now in front of them. He and his friends were up against eight opponents, and all they had to fight back with was a single Shinx.

The Flash Pokémon crackled feebly with electricity, still wincing in pain from the Air Cutter it took from Skarmory.

"Don't fret, kids," said a poacher ominously. "This'll be over before you know it. Houndoom, Ember!"

Houndoom opened its mouth and began firing an onslaught of small fireballs at Shinx.

"NO!" came Susan's defiant scream. Matt looked over just in time to see his friend throw a Poké Ball of her own.

It burst open and another Pokémon materialized in front of Shinx. It was mostly pink except for a white underside, had small, beady eyes, and several growths resembling small tree branches protruding from the top half of its body.

_"Corsola!"_ it shouted, right before bracing itself as the Ember attack began to bombard it.

Dale stared dumbfounded at the new addition to their team. "Since when did you catch a Corsola!?" he said incredulously to Susan.

"I didn't!" she replied. "I've never even seen this Poké Ball before; it just appeared in my pocket out of nowhere and I threw it 'cause I just spontaneously knew what Pokémon was in it!"

Dale and Matt exchanged confused faces for a few seconds.

"...Well, I hope you spontaneously know its moves, too," Matt said.

Susan nodded nervously. "I think I do."

The Ember attack came to an end, and Corsola glared back at the thieves, virtually unscathed.

"Then let's stop wasting time questioning good fortune!" said Dale. "Our Pokémon might be weak, but they still have the type advantages. It might be just enough to make up for it!"

"You got it!" said Susan. "Corsola, use Tackle!"

Corsola rushed forward as fast as it could and slammed itself into Mightyena. The attack was strong enough to push it back a foot or so, but that seemed to be it.

"Mightyena," said one of the poachers as Corsola retreated, "show them a _real_ Tackle!"

Pawing once at the ground, the Bite Pokémon lunged straight for Corsola.

"Corsola, Harden!" Susan ordered.

Corsola's body glowed white for a few seconds as Mightyena closed the distance between them, hitting it hard a few seconds later and sending it flying. It bounced off the ground a few times before coming to a stop in front of its Trainer, after which Corsola righted itself and came bouncing back to the battlefield, seeming no more damaged than Mightyena was from its own Tackle.

"Don't stop now, Susan!" Dale urged. "Keep having Corsola use Tackle! Wear Mightyena down!"

"Right! Corsola, Tackle again!"

As Corsola charged at its target again, Shinx finally stepped forward, mostly over the pain and ready to rejoin the fight.

"Shinx, use Spark!" Matt told his Pokémon.

Shinx's body glowed with blue electricity again, and it rushed forward and jumped right into the closest Golbat, electrocuting it on contact. The Bat Pokémon recoiled in pain, but remained in the air.

"Wow, that looked like it did a lot more than it did to Skarmory!" Matt remarked in surprise, looking back at Dale.

"One thing I've learned about bad guys," said Dale, "is that when you have a lot of one kind, each individual tends to be weak."

"Houndoom, Bite!"

Shinx turned its head just in time to see the Dark Pokémon zip in with incredible speed and snatch it up in its mouth. _"SHIIIIIIIIIINX!"_ it cried as Houndoom clamped down on its body with its teeth.

"Shinx, no!" Matt gasped.

Dale turned to Susan, who had been focused on Corsola and Mightyena up until hearing Shinx's scream. "Susan, use a Water-type attack on Houndoom! Hurry!"

"Right!" Susan pointed at the large, demonic-looking dog. "Corsola, Bubble!"

Corsola jumped straight up to dodge Mightyena's Tackle, and then began blowing large blue water bubbles towards Houndoom. The attack struck Houndoom in the side, and it immediately released Shinx from its jaws.

"Golbat, Supersonic!" said a poacher.

As Shinx started retreating away from Houndoom, the quintet of Golbat flew over the fight and began collectively screeching down on it. Shinx stopped, dropped to the ground and curled up in agony while covering its ears. Corsola cringed under the painful sound, and Matt, Dale, and Susan had to cover their own ears as well.

"Houndoom, use Smog!" said another poacher.

Houndoom opened its mouth and blew a thick, black smoke in Shinx's direction. The haze completely enveloped the Flash Pokémon, who could not bring itself to move under the Supersonic.

"Now, Skarmory," said its Trainer, "Swift, let's go!"

Skarmory opened its own mouth and fired the glowing stars at Corsola.

"Corsola, Harden!" shouted Susan.

But Corsola didn't respond, staying where it was and taking the Swift with minimal resistance.

At this point, Houndoom ran out of breath and had to stop blowing Smog. As the heavy vapor dissipated, Matt spotted Shinx, coughing and hacking while still curled up under the harsh shriek of the Golbat above.

"This isn't working!" Dale shouted over the Supersonic. "There's too many of them, and they're too powerful! I don't think we can defeat them! We might have to just get Illumise and get outta here!"

Matt stared back at him, and then at the crooks. Maybe Dale was right. This was most definitely _not_ what Matt had in mind when he suggested chasing them. From the moment they first set foot in the camp, the experience had been nothing like the _Carmen Sandiego_ games. Instead of a quick, cartoonishly amusing arrest, they had gotten in well over their heads with an incredibly one-sided Pokémon battle, and with every passing second, their opponents seemed more and more like they were not going to be satisfied with just defeating them.

The Golbat finally grew short of breath and stopped their collective Supersonic attack. The kids and their Pokémon slowly uncovered their ears, right as another static burst came through the radio standing in the camp.

_"Scouting Party 7,"_ said the voice from before.

One of the thieves immediately abandoned the group and sprinted to the radio. "Sir, I read you loud and clear!" he said into it.

_"Extract might be longer than expected. Officer Jenny and several more police and civilians are in the forest around you. It doesn't seem like they're looking for you, but they're looking for something, and I don't want to draw their attention. What's your status?"_

The poacher looked up at the children. "We've currently got a mild annoyance on our hands, but we'll stamp it out in no time!"

_"...Just keep the merchandise in your possession,"_ said the voice, not sounding entirely confident.

Matt, Dale, and Susan looked at each other.

"Grown-ups in the forest?" said Susan. "Maybe we should try to call them here somehow so they can help us! We certainly need help right now."

"But how would we do that?" asked Matt. "We're in the middle of the woods; they'd never see anything though all the trees and bushes."

"We could make more noise," Susan thought.

Dale's face lit up in realization. "Or we could use Illumise!" he said. "The yellow part under its head can glow, so we could easily have it fly into the air and send a signal out over the forest that way. Somebody'd _have_ to see it somewhere."

"That's a brilliant idea, Dale!" said Susan.

"Yeah, but how would they know it's a call for help and not just a Pokémon randomly doing its own thing?" Matt wondered.

"Don't worry, I got this," replied Dale. "Just focus on saving Illumise; that's all we need. If we can manage to do that, this could actually work out for us!"

Matt eyed Dale with mild skepticism. Try as he might, he could not think of any means of clearly conveying to someone else that a Bug-type Pokémon was doing more than just going about its own business by flashing its own light. Still, Dale was definitely the smartest kid in school, and even with no real knowledge on Pokémon battling outside of watching them on TV, he had been leading Matt and Susan pretty nicely all throughout this fight.

"...Okay," Matt finally said out loud. "Whatever your plan is, I trust it'll work, because if anyone can do this, it's you, Dale."

He pointed at the poacher holding the Firefly Pokémon captive. "Shinx, go straight for that crook and try to get Illumise back!"

The small cub eyed the Pokémon poacher for a second before taking off across the forest floor on a course for him.

"Oh no you don't!" said a different poacher. "Mightyena, intercept it!"

The grey and black Pokémon rushed over and took position between Shinx and its destination.

"Shinx, use Bite!" Matt called out.

"And go for its leg!" Dale appended.

Right as it reached Mightyena, Shinx leapt forward, locked its jaws around one of its front legs, and bit down as hard as it could.

Mightyena yelped in pain and jumped away as Shinx let go of it and resumed running towards its target.

"Skarmory, Air Cutter, quick!" said the crook.

"Dodge it, Shinx!" Matt shouted.

The Armor Bird Pokémon put everything it had into flapping its wings and sending out wave after wave of the attack, but Shinx stayed alert and moved back and forth to evade each shot. It came out of the onslaught untouched and now very near Illumise and the poacher guarding it.

"Houndoom, stop that Shinx!" ordered another opponent. "Use Ember!"

Shinx turned its head to see its other quadruped adversary sending another fiery wave its way.

"Don't let that Ember hit Shinx, Corsola!" Susan ordered. "Get in there and intercept it with Bubble!"

_"Corsola!"_ Corsola dashed forward as fast as it could, stopping after a few big bounds and firing its attack. The water bubbles floated into the path of the Ember just in time, bursting in flashes of steam as the small fire projectiles vaporized them and puffed out of existence.

"Golbat, use Supersonic!"

The Golbat flying overhead began to screech in unison, once again forcing the kids and their Pokémon to stop moving and cover their ears.

_Good Arceus, my ears are gonna bleed by the end of this,_ Matt thought, his eyes slowly starting to water from the pain of the attack.

He stared out at Shinx, again reduced to a quivering ball on the ground.

"C'mon, Shinx!" Dale shouted out to it. "I know it hurts, but you gotta try and keep going! If you can free Illumise, we might win this! Just by getting Illumise! So please do it! Do it for all of us!"

Matt watched Shinx, unsure if his Pokémon could even hear Dale's pleas.

But slowly, the Flash Pokémon began to uncurl. Its head rose, ears down as much as possible, and then it started to stand back up, putting one front paw firmly on the ground, following with the other...

"Golbat, full power Supersonic, quick!"

The Golbat increased the intensity of their scream. The extra volume was enough to force the kids to their knees.

"IT HURTS!" wailed Susan, her eyes screwed shut. "IT HURTS SO MUCH!"

Matt wanted to cry under the excruciating agony of the attack. He could only watch as Shinx crumpled back to the ground. As it lay there helplessly, he tried desperately to think of what to do next.

A few seconds later, Shinx let out an agonizing scream. The kind of scream that's produced from the combination of intense pain and complete helplessness. The scream you let out when you're at the full mercy of someone or something else that was inflicting harm on you and unable to do a single thing to stop it.

And then it started glowing white.

The abrupt glow was enough of a surprise for the Golbat to abort their Supersonic in response.

The kids took their hands off their ears and gawked at the sight from their kneeling positions, not even bothering to stand back up.

"What's happening?" Matt wondered.

The white glow grew until it was about twice its original size, and then relented to leave a similar but different creature standing in Shinx's spot. A mane of black fur ringed its head as well as traveling down from its forehead to its nose in a "V" shape. Its inner ears were round instead of sharing the star shape of the tail, and its front legs now each sported two yellow rings instead of one.

_"Luxio!"_ it snarled in a much gruffer voice, the scowl on its face adding to the effect.

"...AWWW, YES!!!" Dale jumped to his feet and pumped his fist. "Shinx evolved into Luxio!"

"Shinx evolved!?" said Matt in astonishment, standing back up with Susan.

"Yep!" Dale replied, a huge smile now on his face. "Now it's bigger, stronger, faster, and all in all a better battler! The tables just turned, and they've turned towards us!"

"So what if your Pokémon evolved?" said Skarmory's Trainer. "We'll _still_ slaughter you. Skarmory, Air Cutter!"

Dale called out to the newly evolved Pokémon. "Luxio! Dodge it and go get Illumise!"

_"Luxio, Lux!"_ Luxio took off like a rocket, avoiding the Air Cutter and reaching the opposing poacher in close to no time. Matt stood and watched in awe at the newfound speed his pet Pokémon was demonstrating. He had never seen it moving that fast as a Shinx.

Before the crook could do anything to counter it, Luxio snatched up the opposite end of Illumise's net in its teeth and tried to pull it out of his hands. The poacher had to drop the Moomoo Milk bottle he had been holding and grab the net with both hands to keep it from slipping loose, and even then, the strength and sheer suddenness of the action was almost sufficient to jerk him off his feet.

"C'mon, Luxio!" Susan cheered as Luxio and the poacher struggled fruitlessly with each other for several seconds. "Save Illumise! You can do it!"

"Skarmory, quick, Sand-Attack!" yelled the poacher, sounding on the verge of panic.

His Pokémon immediately zoomed upward, before turning in a midair loop to come nosediving back down to the ground near Luxio.

"Corsola, use Harden and block it!" said Susan.

As soon as the words left her mouth, the pink Pokémon sprinted to the impact zone and braced itself, glowing as it raised its own defenses.

Skarmory struck it dead-on. The force of the impact sent some dirt flying out and away from them, but that was all.

Luxio eased up on its pull for a split second before giving Illumise's net a really good yank, and that was finally enough to wrench the net free from the poacher's hands.

"Golbat," shouted another. "Supers—"

"Luxio, quick, jump off that guy and use Spark on them!" Dale didn't even wait to hear the rest of the bad guy's instruction.

Luxio wasted no time in jumping onto the head and shoulders of the criminal trying to direct the Golbat, taking Illumise along with it. It charged itself with electrical energy, shocking the poacher and interrupting his instruction to the overhead bats.

It then sprung off of him to reach and hit one of the Golbat itself. The resultant discharge scattered through the air in all directions, catching every other Golbat flying in the air.

Luxio came back down to Earth and landed on the ground, its stolen cargo still securely in its mouth. The poachers' Golbat followed, one after the other, all completely knocked out.

"Awesome job, Luxio!" shouted Dale, waving it back to him and Matt. "Now bring Illumise back to me!"

The lynx-like Pokémon sprinted across the forest floor as fast as it could, not stopping or even slowing down until it was back with its owner and his friends. Once there, Luxio dropped the net it had been carrying in its mouth at Dale's feet.

"Are you okay, Illumise?" he said to the Firefly Pokémon trapped inside, removing it from the net.

Matt looked back at the poachers, who were busy returning the defeated Golbat to their Poké Balls.

"They've taken the target!" said one of them in alarm. "We have to recover it now!"

"Agreed," said another. "I don't wanna have to spend another week and a half searching these woods for another stupidly hard-to-find Illumise!"

" _That's_ what you're worried about!?" said a third poacher.

"Houndoom! Mightyena! Skarmory!" the first poacher ordered. "Take back our target now!"

The trio of Pokémon that were still standing charged at the group.

"All right, Luxio!" shouted Matt, pointing at the Pokémon. "Go!"

Luxio turned around and charged right back at its opponents, leaping through the air in an airborne Tackle as it reached them. _"Luxio!"_

* * *

Matt continued his full-throttle sprint down the path, Chikorita in his arms and Bowser's fireballs shooting after him. He adjusted his course to prevent himself from getting roasted, moving from side to side to let the fiery flying projectiles pass him by. Amidst the small glowing particles of ash that infested the air around him, he kept his eyes on the large tower in the middle of the lava lake.

"Uh, Matt?" said Chikorita. "You're about to run out of path."

Matt looked straight ahead to see the end of the light blue stone trail rapidly coming up on him. Luckily, a parallel wooden plank bridge began running over the lava shortly before that point.

_Lane change!_ he thought, jumping over to it without sacrificing any momentum. He took a second to look behind him.

He had put a good amount of distance between him and the Koopa King, but that was not deterring him in the slightest from keeping up his fireball siege. Wave after wave, they kept coming up behind him, easily overtaking him with their faster speed and forcing him to weave back and forth over the bridge, again and again.

Matt turned his head back around to process the course in front of him. The bridge he was running on went almost all the way to the tower he was heading for, but ended abruptly in the middle of the lake before actually reaching it. Nearby, a white square stone rose out of the lava, serving as the anchoring point for a second bridge that stretched the rest of the way to a wooden door in the wall of the tower's square base.

_Almost there!_ he thought, eyeing a small black button on the stone peninsula in front of the door. _Just have to press that switch, and I'll win!_

Podoboos jumped out of the lava flowing around the bridge as Matt got closer and closer to the start of the next one. He felt a _THUD!_ resonate through the planks and glanced behind him again.

Bowser had jumped from the stone path in the lava onto the bridge that Matt was on and was now starting to run after him. He moved surprisingly quickly, no doubt due to his size allowing him to take much bigger steps than Matt ever could. But even then, he was far enough behind him that Matt wasn't worried about getting caught.

He reached the second bridge and wasted no time in jumping over again. Unfortunately, he landed a little too close to the edge and his foot slipped off, causing him to stumble forward and fall flat on his face, losing hold of Chikorita in the process.

The Grass Pokémon hit the ground on her stomach and slid a couple of feet. She quickly jumped back up and looked at Matt, who recovered almost as fast. He started to stand back up, but abruptly hit the deck again just before another wave of fireballs sailed over his head.

"You okay, Matt?" she asked.

"Yep," he replied, getting back on his feet in a crouching position and glancing at her. "You?"

Chikorita nodded.

"C'mon, then," said Matt, springing back to a fully upright stance. "That button's not gonna press itself."

He took off down the final bridge, sprinting as fast as he could possibly go. Chikorita glanced behind her before following at her own full-speed sprint, for in looking behind her, she realized that Bowser had managed to close much of the gap between him and them while they were recovering from the trip-up.

Continuing to breathe fireballs at the two intruders, the Koopa King jumped over to the white block anchoring the bridge and began leaping in large, slow bounds across it in their direction, covering at least three or four times his own size, but having to stop for at least that many seconds afterward as well.

Matt paid him no mind. All of his mind was focused on the black button emblazoned with a large flat red icon of Bowser's head sitting in front of the tower door. It got closer and closer with every stride he took, and once he and Chikorita were within a range he thought to be close enough, he took a gigantic leap into the air and dove for his goal headfirst.

He missed.

Completely overshooting the black button, he hit the ground behind it and crashed right into the door in the tower wall. His feet fell on the switch, pressing it into the ground as Chikorita rushed in behind him, jumping off the wooden bridge and onto the stone.

_BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!_

Chikorita looked out over the lava lake as a series of small explosions went off in between the planks, going down the bridge like a row of falling dominoes. Two seconds after that, she watched as the bridge itself started to fail in almost the exact same manner, falling into the lava one plank at a time.

Bowser looked as if he was freaking out upon seeing the chain reaction race rapidly towards him. Chikorita was certain the bridge collapse would reach and subject the Koopa King to a lava bath before he could take any kind of action to get himself to safety, leaving her and Matt victorious.

But Bowser surprised her by turning tail and running (not taking huge, slow-motion strides like she and Matt normally saw from him, but actually running) back towards the white block at the opposite end of the bridge. He made it onto the stable stone island just before the last plank went boom and fell to a fiery grave.

Chikorita cringed slightly as Bowser turned back around and gave her a smug smile coupled with an evil laugh.

"Darn it, Matt, you were too quick on the draw!" she said to her owner, who by now had recovered from his faceplant.

Matt opened his mouth to respond, but a thump and rumble behind him cut him off. Turning around, he and his Pokémon watched the door in the wall slowly slide upward, allowing entry into the tower.

"...C'mon, let's go," said Matt. "Bowser can't get in our way anymore, anyway."

They followed the purple carpet on the ground into the room. The room itself was largely empty, save for a few torches locked into alcoves in the wall by jail window-like grates. At the far end of the room, a large clear orange box with an "!" on its sides and a small white light and confetti contained within it floated in the air just above Matt's head.

Matt abruptly stopped upon seeing the hovering box. He stared at it for a second.

"...The frik is this?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Chikorita tilted her head. "I dunno, but...I think we're supposed to go into it."

Before Matt could object, she jumped up onto one of his arms and vaulted off of it straight into the box, disappearing on contact with it.

Matt stared blankly at the object for a few more seconds.

"...Okay," he said with a shrug, running underneath the box and jumping into it from below as if it were a ? Block he wanted to empty.

As soon as he touched the exterior of the orange item, his surroundings changed completely. They went from an interior brick room to a wide-open, unobstructed view of the sky. After landing and seeing that Chikorita was on the ground nearby, the disoriented Defender took a more exhaustive look at his new location.

They seemed to be on the roof of a large circular tower. A small mountain of huge wooden crates sat on one side, while a flagpole stood planted on a much smaller, carpet-adorned stone platform that occupied the other side, flying a large, black, flag accented with yellow top and bottom borders, a jagged pattern along the edge opposite to the pole, and the same red icon of Bowser's face as the switch.

Matt ran to the side of the tower and looked down over its edge. Seeing the square base below, he realized they were now on top of the tower they were previously in.

_Okay,_ he thought, turning back to observe the objects on the roof with him, _where do Mario and Yoshi usually go from here? Do they just grab the flagpole and call it a day, or do they usually still have a few more things to do beforehand?_

A distant roar interrupted his musings. He turned his head back to look out over the tower only to gawk as Bowser came soaring through the air, landing right on the top of the tower in the center, in between him and Chikorita.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" Matt half-yelled, half-groaned. "That should not be possible!"

Bowser chuckled malevolently and let out a moderate roar.

"Shut up," Matt grumbled in annoyance.

Bowser responded by taking a deep breath and spitting a fireball at Matt at point-blank range. Matt was only just quick enough to scramble out of the way without damage.

Chikorita whirled up her head leaf and threw several Razor Leaves at Bowser from her position on the other side of him, but they had no effect. Even the ones that weren't deflected by his shell were striking his horns or arms, causing minimal damage at best.

"Try your Vine Whips instead!" Matt said as Bowser turned away from him to face Chikorita.

His Pokémon heeded his suggestion and aimed straight for Bowser's face.

_WHAP! WHAP!_

_"RAAARGH!"_ The Koopa King reeled backwards from the vine strikes, covering his face as he went back to facing Matt.

"Nice!" Matt cheered, pumping his fist.

But his praise was cut short when Bowser lunged forward and slashed at him with open claws. He tried to evade his attacker again, but the Koopa King still caught and sliced into his shoulder.

"AAAAGH!" Matt grabbed the wound with his other hand and tried not to curse.

Bowser wound up his fist and prepared to throw a punch at his stunned opponent. Right as he leaned back for maximum strength, however, he felt something wrap tightly around his wrist, preventing him from carrying out his attack.

"Oh no you don't!" said Chikorita, straining to hold Bowser back with her Vine Whips.

Matt's eyes darted around. He knew Chikorita was nowhere near powerful enough to hold Bowser for any appreciable period. It was only a matter of time before he overpowered her and they would need another strategy.

He glanced out into the sky as his mind raced to figure something out, only to blink and take a much more focused look at something flying in the far distance.

_...Is that Goombella and Parakarry?_ he wondered. The colors and shape seemed to suggest it, but whatever it was, it was much too far away for Matt to discern.

_"GRRRRAH!"_ Bowser swung his arm down in an arc as if he wanted to pound the ground underneath, yanking Chikorita off her feet and sending her screaming over his head by her vines like a sling. Matt jumped to intercept and catch her before she went over the edge of the tower.

_Well,_ he thought, running in a circle around Bowser and trying to block out the pain of his shoulder wound, _if that _is_ them, I'm gonna need to call them here with some kind of distress call like..._

His eyes fell on the pile of crates sitting by the flagpole.

_That._

Bowser threw another fireball at the duo, and Matt dashed to one side to dodge it. Running along the embattlement of the tower, he reached and jumped up onto the pile of crates.

_Will he take the bait?_ he wondered. _Or should I taunt him?_

Bowser jumped up in the air and sent a fireball directly at Matt.

_Nope, he took it!_ Matt thought with a grin as he leapt off his perch, letting the fireball strike and set ablaze the crate behind him.

He dropped Chikorita to the ground and pointed at Bowser. "Chikorita, Razor Leaf!"

With his front exposed, Chikorita had a much better vantage point to throw her leafy projectiles at Bowser in places where they would actually do him harm.

Matt watched his Pokémon continue the barrage, but most of his focus was actually on the crates. The fire had spread to several others in the miniature mountain, with flames licking the exterior of almost every crate even if some of them were not quite outright burning yet. The entire pile, while not yet completely engulfed in flames, was well on its way into erupting into a nice big bonfire.

_There's a signal they _have_ to notice,_ Matt thought.

* * *

_ZAP!_

Mightyena sailed backwards through the air, striking the radio standing by one of the camp's tents hard enough to put a severe dent in it before falling on its back, howling pitifully. The electronic device sparked for a few seconds before dying out with some small puffs of smoke.

"No, not the radio!" said a poacher in dismay. "That was our only line of communication to Command!"

_"Luxio!"_ The Pokémon roared triumphantly as its body sparked with electricity of its own.

"Great job, Luxio!" Matt said. "Keep it up!"

"Now, Corsola!" Susan commanded. "Use Bubble!"

Coming in from the other side of the battlefield, Corsola fired off the Water-type move as Mightyena tried to stand back up.

"Houndoom, Ember!" shouted its Trainer.

The other dog immediately jumped in front of its canine comrade and sent a counterattack directly at Corsola. The two moves clashed in the middle for a few seconds, canceling each other out, but soon the Bubble attack gave out altogether, and the Ember, still going strong, tore through the air and hit Corsola dead-on.

"Hang in there, Susan and Corsola!" said Dale encouragingly, looking up from where he was kneeling by Illumise. "You guys are doing great!"

"Are we ready to call the grown-ups here yet, Dale?" asked Matt. "Even after Luxio's evolution, we're still not doing much damage to those Pokémon. I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to keep this up."

"We're about to do that right now," said Dale, standing and pointing to a small hole in the canopy of tree leaves above them. "Illumise, fly up there and do just what I taught you!"

_'Taught' it?_ Matt thought. _Did he teach Illumise a new move? That'd certainly be really cool!_

Illumise began to rise up through the air, but before getting even halfway to the treetops, Skarmory immediately flew in and blocked its way.

"Fly around it, Illumise!" commanded Dale.

"Don't let it, Skarmory!" said its Trainer. "Agility, now!"

Illumise tried to fly in a different direction, but Skarmory vanished and reappeared right in front of it. The Firefly Pokémon attempted to change course again, but was met with the same result. No matter which way it turned, Skarmory was there to keep it from going anywhere.

_"Skaaaaar!"_ it squawked aggressively.

"Oh, you wanna play like that, Skarmory?" said Dale, unintimidated. "Have it your way. Illumise, Tackle!"

Illumise slammed itself into Skarmory with just as much defiance as Dale. Skarmory recoiled from the impact, but shrugged it off with little ill effects.

Down below, Susan and Corsola were still contending with Houndoom and Mightyena alongside Matt and Luxio. The onslaught was starting to visibly wear on her Pokémon. Even with a Water/Rock-type, the superior strength of their opponents meant that considerable damage could build up as the battle went on longer and longer.

She looked past the opposing Pokémon at their Trainers, and nearly panicked upon seeing one of them readying the large net-firing device again.

He aimed for Illumise and squeezed the trigger.

"Corsola, quick!" Susan yelled, pointing. "Block that capturer thingy!"

_"Corsola!"_ Corsola sprang up into the air, trying to get into the net's line of fire. It was hampered by its injuries and fatigue, but still jumped high enough that the mesh caught and tangled on its coral growths, interrupting its flight.

"Illumise, come back to me, quick!" said Dale, watching the scene.

Illumise retreated out of the air and took a hovering position near Dale, who proceeded to call someone else.

"Matt!"

"What's up, Dale?" Matt asked.

"I need you and Luxio to battle Skarmory," said Dale. "It's too fast to get around, and I can't risk fighting it with Illumise if those crooks are gonna try and snatch it back right out of the battle."

Matt looked at Luxio, currently engaged with both Mightyena and Houndoom, and then at Corsola, who had shaken off the net it had intercepted and was now bounding back to Luxio's side.

"But what about Corsola?" Matt fretted. "It's not looking so great; I don't know if it'd be able to handle both Mightyena _and_ Houndoom at this point."

"Not to worry!" said Susan confidently. "I know exactly what to do! ...I think."

She called to Corsola. "Corsola, use...Wait a sec, what move was it?"

She gritted her teeth and stared at the ground in front of her. Matt twitched, knowing his friend's memory lapse was costing them time. Thankfully, it didn't last long.

"...Ooh, got it, got it, got it!" she rambled. "Use Recover!"

Her Pokémon's body began glowing in rainbow colors. The wounds on its body slowly faded away.

"Awesome!" said Matt, grinning.

"Go battle Skarmory!" said Susan, returning the smile. "Corsola and I got this."

Matt called out to his Pokémon. "Luxio, c'mon! We're gonna take down Skarmory!"

_"Luxio!"_

"Don't worry," said Dale as Matt and Luxio moved to join him. "If things get out of hand, Illumise and I'll jump in and help."

Matt smiled and nodded before turning to face Skarmory. He pointed. "Luxio, Spark!"

Luxio charged its body, and then its foe.

"Dodge it, Skarmory!"

Skarmory flew up just in time to evade Luxio's electrified body tackle.

"Now," said its Trainer, "use Sand-Attack!"

As Luxio skidded to a stop and turned around, Skarmory touched down on the ground and started flapping its wings at the dirt in front of it, kicking it up and enveloping Luxio in a dust storm.

"Stay on your toes, Luxio!" said Matt. "Use Spark again!"

A blue glow came into being inside the cloud. It started moving rapidly in Skarmory's direction, but when Luxio finally burst out of the cloud of dirt, it did so going off to one side, missing its target entirely. Once it came to a standstill again, Matt saw why: his Pokémon had its eyes shut tight and was desperately trying to clear dust out of them.

"Skarmory, Swift, let's go!"

The Armor Bird Pokémon flew over its opponent and fired its attack straight down onto it. The star projectiles struck Luxio and sent it hurtling through the air towards Matt, who jolted himself into action and rushed forward to catch his Pokémon.

He succeeded, but had not taken into account that after evolving, Luxio now weighed a lot more than it used to. The cub hit him in the chest after landing in his arms, knocking him right off his feet and onto his back.

"Keep it up, Skarmory!" said the opposing poacher. "Air Cutter, now!"

Matt's eyes went wide with disbelief as Skarmory, without hesitation, took position directly over him and fired the commanded attack. He couldn't even say anything before the move hit both Luxio and him. It felt like the air itself had knocked the wind out of him.

"Dale!" he choked out after regaining his breath. "I think things are getting out of hand!"

Matt forced himself to sit up and then looked back at where his friend had been standing.

He wasn't there.

He wasn't anywhere, in fact, and neither was Illumise. Matt looked around as thoroughly as he could without outright dillydallying, but Dale had all but completely disappeared from the battlefield.

_Where'd he go?_ he wondered.

"Swift, Skarmory! Don't let them regroup!"

Matt was forced to cover his face as another wave of Swift rained down from above. Every star that hit him felt like a hot knife edge striking his skin.

_This is 700 times worse than getting a shot at the doctor's!_ he thought, gritting his teeth. _Dale, where are you!? You said you'd help..._

The Swift attack abated after what felt like far too long, leaving Matt staring up at the Armor Bird Pokémon that still commanded the battlefield airspace. Luxio was beside him, visibly panting and just barely staying on its paws.

"Time to end this!" said Skarmory's Trainer. "Skarmory, finish them off with Air Cutter!"

Matt braced himself for another air-based gut punch. Was he on his own now? Had Dale decided to just abandon him? What kind of a friend would do something like that?

"Tackle!"

_WHAM!_

Matt's jaw dropped as Illumise zoomed in from seemingly out of nowhere and slammed squarely into Skarmory's body. He looked behind him to see Dale standing a few feet away. Susan was running over to them as well, followed closely by Corsola.

Dale knelt down by Matt and held out his hand. "Told you we'd jump in if things got out of hand!" he said with a smile.

Matt stared breathlessly back at his friend. "...Dale," he finally managed to say, taking his hand and standing back up, "you really _are_ epic!"

Dale's grin turned slightly more sheepish.

"Corsola, Bubble!" Susan shouted.

Corsola unleashed its attack on Skarmory before it could fully recover from Illumise's surprise Tackle. The Armor Bird Pokémon took the onslaught in full force with little in the way of resistance.

"Now, Luxio, use Spark!" Matt ordered.

His Pokémon electrified its body once more and rammed itself into Skarmory. The bird was almost down for the count, only barely managing to keep itself airborne.

Dale, Susan, and Matt took a moment to glance at each other in a small circle. After a second or so, they nodded collectively, with Matt somehow knowing exactly what they were about to do.

They turned to face their opponents.

"Now, Illumise!" said Dale.

"Corsola!" Susan called.

"Luxio!" Matt could barely stand still.

"Triple Tackle!" they finished in unison, pointing at Skarmory in a single unified motion.

They watched as their Pokémon built up their speed and power for the tandem attack. Luxio ran away from Skarmory in the path of a large arc, sprinting back towards the kids and then continuing to curve until its foe was in its sights again. Corsola bounced along the ground, gathering as much momentum as it could in its aim to hit Skarmory head-on. Illumise flew straight up into the air and performed a loop-the-loop, plummeting back down to Earth to gain speed. At the last moment, it pulled out of the dive and tore through the air, fast as a Jolteon and straight as a Linoone, on a trajectory leading straight into its target's stomach.

_SMASH!_

The trio of Pokémon converged on Skarmory, all three crashing into it at the exact same moment. Their opponent was immediately thrown backwards at speeds comparable to those of a flying Ninjask, slamming into a tree trunk behind it and bouncing off of it back into the battlefield, over the heads of the poachers, and crash-landing directly in the campsite's in-use fire ring.

_"SKAAARRR!"_ The screech of agony rang out through the forest as Skarmory was seared by the flames.

"No, Skarmory!" shouted its Trainer. He rushed over to his Pokémon as it rolled out of the fire ring, fell face-down on the ground, and fainted.

_"YES!!!"_ Dale leapt into the air with the most emphatic fist pump Matt had ever seen from him. "Now, Illumise, go signal for help!"

Illumise flew up into the air and through the hole in the leaves, taking position over the treetops. Matt watched as the yellow section of its front body under its head began to glow.

But a simple glow it did not do. Instead, Illumise began flashing its light in a pattern, starting with three short flashes in rapid succession, then pausing before blinking again at a much slower pace, staying lit for a longer duration than before. After three of these slower flashes and another pause, it sent out another three short, fast blinks, and continued to alternate between that and the three slow, long blinks, pausing briefly in between each trio.

"What's that fancy blinking?" Susan wondered.

"It's called an SOS signal," said Dale, looking up at the Firefly Pokémon and grinning confidently. "It's a really old distress call I learned about while chasing Carmen on my final ACME case at school. What you do is—"

"Mightyena, Bite!"

"Maybe not stop to explain something in the middle of a battle!" Matt finished as Mightyena ran at them full speed.

"Corsola, Harden!" Susan commanded.

Corsola jumped in front of the group and glistened as it strengthened its body. Mightyena rushed in and attempted to sink its teeth into the Coral Pokémon, but the attack seemed to hurt Mightyena a lot more than Corsola, who stayed where it was as its attacker let go after a few seconds, moving its jaws in an uncomfortable manner.

"Houndoom, Smog!" shouted another poacher.

Houndoom inhaled and then sent out another dark cloud from its mouth. The poisonous haze drifted in Luxio's direction.

"Dodge, Luxio!" said Matt.

Luxio jumped to the side and let the Smog pass.

_"Growoooooooo!"_

_"Luxio?"_ Luxio turned its head in the direction of the distant howl. The kids and Corsola did likewise, along with their opponents.

Several Growlithe sprang out of the nearby bushes. A large portion of them ran straight for Houndoom and Mightyena, quickly overpowering and subduing them with their larger numbers before either one could react. The others wasted no time in surrounding the poachers in a circle, growling as intimidatingly as they could at their now very nervous targets.

As Matt watched, several humans began to emerge from the surrounding forest to join them.

The first one to appear was a tall, thin woman dressed in a dark blue uniform. Her hair was greenish-blue and she wore a blue hat accentuated with a gold badge-like insignia. Red trimmings were present on the top of the hat as well as the ends of the uniform's sleeves. She also wore white gloves and had a small black purse on a strap slung over her shoulder.

"It's Officer Jenny!" Dale exclaimed. "She got our signal!"

"Yay, our call for help worked!" Susan cheered, raising a fist to the sky and hopping on one foot in her excitement.

"Don't move!" said Officer Jenny to the poachers. "You're under arrest!"

Matt looked over the other people that made up the group of grown-ups. There were a few male police officers dressed in the same uniform as Jenny, and several ordinary people as well. His eyes widened in surprise after seeing a couple of the people he had asked about Skarmory's Trainer in the town's Poké Mart within the crowd.

"Hey, I remember that lady!" Dale said in mild shock, pointing to one of the women that Matt didn't recognize. "She was eating lunch when I asked her where our suspect went!"

"And there's the Moomoo Milk man that gave me our clue!" said Susan, pointing at the man.

Matt looked at the grown-ups his friends were pointing out, but then a much more familiar face caught his eye. One he had known all his life because it belonged to a childhood friend of his mother.

Standing next to the Moomoo Milk man was a woman similar in height to most of the other grown-ups, but of a much heavier stature than the others. She had curly goldenrod hair done in unbraided pigtails, and grey eyes that looked somewhat judgmental.

"Hey, look!" Matt said, pointing at the woman. "Irene's here, too!"

As he spoke, Irene turned her attention from Officer Jenny and the poachers to him, Dale, and Susan. As soon as she saw them, she began walking in their direction.

Matt ran to meet her along with Dale and Susan. "Irene, it's great to see—"

But before he could finish, Irene snatched him and his friends up by their wrists, Matt in one hand, Dale and Susan together in the other, and yanked them right off their feet. Matt heard Susan let out a shrill squeak of surprise as the sudden action caused her to lose her grip on the Poké Ball she had been holding. It fell to the forest floor as Irene dragged the three kids away into the woods, their heels skidding along the ground. Luxio rushed past the Poké Ball Susan had dropped as it ran after them, leaving a bemused Corsola standing in the campsite with the police officers, poachers, and civilians.

_"...Corsola?"_

* * *

The crates sitting on the tower glowed with bright orange and yellow flames. The impromptu pieces of fuel were starting to wither and blacken as the blaze consumed them, but the fire itself was still healthy enough to run for a while longer.

By now, the strange object flying in the sky had moved much closer, close enough that Matt could tell exactly who it was. As he suspected, it was Parakarry and Goombella, the former carrying the latter below him in his arms as he moved through the air.

But Matt was not willing to relax just yet. Even though he had successfully sent out a call for help and had it answered, Bowser was still on the tower with him, which meant that there was still a substantial risk of getting either trampled underfoot, slashed by sharp claws (again), tripped up by a tail whirl, or a whiff of horrid-smelling Koopa King breath to his face. Matt was worried about the last one the most; he would have to take a shower somewhere other than his villa if he got saddled with that stench, lest he drag it into his home with him and stink up everything else in it.

_I gotta buy time for them to get here,_ he thought. _If Bowser sees them, I'll bet he could easily blast them out of the sky. Gotta keep him distracted until they reach us._

Bowser took a step forward and swung his tail at Chikorita. The Leaf Pokémon jumped to evade the attack.

"Razor Leaf!" Matt shouted.

Chikorita launched another barrage of sharp leaves at Bowser, who crossed his arms in front of him to deflect them.

"Keep it up, Chikorita!" Matt encouraged. "Use Vine Whip!"

Extending her vines, Chikorita wrapped them around Bowser's arms and tried to pull them down to expose his face again. Matt watched her strain under the resistance Bowser was putting up.

He glanced out past Bowser at his incoming rescue party. Parakarry and Goombella had covered quite a bit of distance in that short time. At speeds like that, they'd reach the tower in no time!

Bowser reeled back his arms, yanking a screaming Chikorita off the ground once again. But this time, he swung his fist back out as she flew towards him and hit Chikorita dead-on with a powerful punch, sending her sprawling onto the ground off to the side.

The hulking Koopa began to walk towards the downed fighter.

"Hey!" Matt shouted, his focus back on the battle. "Keep your claws off my Pokémon!"

He jumped in between Bowser and Chikorita before running up to him and throwing a punch right to his nose with his uninjured arm. He had no illusions that that simple attack would do any substantial damage, but it was nevertheless very satisfying seeing his foe's snout ripple from the impact.

So he decided to do it again. And again. The constant onslaught seemed to keep the Koopa King stunned, which was just fine with Matt seeing as all he really needed was to buy time for Goombella and Parakarry to arrive at the tower. Once they got there, they would all...

_...Hang on,_ he thought. _Extra allies won't do us any good if we still don't know how to beat him._

He failed to notice that in his realization, he had inadvertently stopped his rapid-fire punching Bowser in the face. By the time he did, his foe had recovered and proceeded to take another lunging swipe at him with his sharp claws. Once again, Matt only just escaped getting hit. His wounded shoulder burned with the exertion of his maneuvering as Bowser skidded to a stop right near the edge of the tower.

"Okay, dude, you need to calm down," said Matt, clutching his shoulder. "Chikorita, Sweet Scent!"

Chikorita struggled back onto her feet and raised her head leaf, letting the pleasant-smelling pink powder begin to emanate. Bowser inhaled in preparation for another fireball, but when the organic dust reached him, he stopped and began to relax. Given that he started glaring even more intensely at Chikorita and Matt as this happened, the letup was apparently against his will.

Matt grinned, finally feeling like he was a little more in control. He looked up as Parakarry took position directly over Bowser, several dozen feet over their heads.

He then proceeded to drop Goombella.

The Goomba archæologist plummeted down to the tower, inverting herself in midair to assume a head-first dive. As she fell closer and closer, Matt felt a devious grin creep onto his face; this was going to hurt, for sure!

_CONK!_

She struck Bowser on the head, squarely between his horns.

The Koopa King's grunt of surprise resonated all through the castle as Goombella bounced fluidly off of him and landed by the flagpole. Matt watched him reel from the impact, stumbling to one side, and then the other, before toppling backwards onto his shell, flipping right over the tower's embattlement and falling out of sight down to the lava below.

The sound of splashing hot liquid rock followed a few seconds later, and a few globs of it flew back up in the air and into his sight before falling down again.

Parakarry slowly descended down to the tower from overhead to rejoin the other three fighters already on top of it. He initially tried to land on what was left of the stack of crates, but as soon as his feet touched the burned-out husk of the topmost wooden container, it fell apart into its individual pieces of lumber remnants, which then tumbled down the pile onto the other crates, causing the mountain to collapse into itself, leaving a large heap of smoldering, blackened wood pieces and steel cubes next to the flagpole.

Matt chuckled as Parakarry gingerly touched down by Chikorita. He turned to Goombella.

"That was a cool maneuver, Goombella," he said, still smiling deviously. "You and Parakarry managed to give Bowser the Headbonk from the Underwhere."

Goombella grinned back. "C'mon, grab the flagpole and let's go home."

Matt stared at the large pole still flying the Bowser flag atop the tower. Normally, the Defender would try to jump up and grab onto it as high as he could and then slide down to the base like a firefighter while taking the flag down with him, but his shoulder was most definitely _not_ in favor of that right now.

Instead, he walked over to the base of the pole and simply grasped it with his other hand. He looked back at the others.

"...Well, that _is_ grabbing it," Chikorita remarked.

"...Fair enough," Goombella conceded.

* * *

"What in Arceus' name were you three thinking?" said Irene in outrage, shaking her finger at the kids. "This is not _Carmen_ ; young kids like you should not be chasing down real thieves!"

Matt stared sheepishly at the floor, knowing full well that the entire idea of going after the poachers had been his idea. Dale and Susan looked less ashamed, but Dale was constantly fidgeting in discomfort and avoiding direct eye contact with the grown-up before him, and Susan was blushing slightly while trying desperately not to show it, her eyes darting around the room. Only Luxio seemed completely unfazed by the scolding, sitting still and staring stoically back at Irene.

She had brought the kids to Susan's house, which was right next door to their home city's police station. Out a nearby window of the room they were in, Officer Jenny and the other policemen could be seen leading the captive crooks inside. Matt almost wished he was with them right now instead of his friends.

"Do have any idea how much trouble you caused by going off like that?" Irene continued. "What kind of panic almost broke loose when we realized what you were up to?"

They said nothing, though Dale managed a small shake of his head.

"You children need to understand how to properly conduct yourselves," said Irene, folding her arms in disdain. "There is no room in society for people who step out of line and do not do what is expected of them. You must know your place and adhere to the appropriate expectations."

Luxio licked one of its paws and rubbed its face with it, seemingly bored with the lecture. Matt, Dale, and Susan continued to stay silent.

"Now then," said Irene. "Dale, your parents will be here shortly to pick you up. Susan, I will keep an eye on you here until your parents come home from work. Once they do, Matthew, I will take you home to _your_ parents. In the meantime, the three of you are going to stay here and behave yourselves while I go next door and talk with Officer Jenny. Do you understand?"

The kids nodded meekly and then watched Irene turn around and leave the house through the front doors.

"Well!" Dale exclaimed almost giddily as soon as the doors clicked shut, much to Matt's surprise. "Wasn't _that_ awesome!"

"Uh, _yeah!_ " Susan said as if it were painfully obvious, her enthusiasm just as high. "We foiled the crooks just like in _Carmen_!"

Matt stared at his friends for a moment. Just a second ago, they looked almost as ashamed of themselves as Matt was of _him_ self. How did they manage to get over it so quickly?

"It's just too bad she dragged us out of there before we had time to bring Illumise with us," said Dale in regret. "It did so well in that battle..."

"Corsola got left behind in the forest, too," Susan added sadly, hanging her head. "I dropped the Poké Ball when Irene grabbed us."

"Easy come, easy go, I guess," said Matt. "I'm just glad we battle a lot better than we sing or dance."

"True that," said Dale with a solemn nod. "We were in a pretty tight bind there for a while; heck, some of those attacks actually hit _Matt!_ Not just our Pokémon; they hit one of _us!_ "

"Yeah," Matt replied, cringing at just thinking about the intense pain of Skarmory's Swift. "Honestly, that was a really stupid plan I came up with, actually chasing after the villains ourselves. But I'll tell you one thing: after today, I will never throw a fit over getting a shot ever again."

"You're right," said Dale. "Being real-life ACME Detectives is probably not something we should really try for. We should leave that sort of stuff to Officer Jenny and try doing something a little less dangerous."

"Like singing the _Carmen Sandiego_ theme songs!" Matt exclaimed.

"Or maybe even playing them!" said Susan. "I've always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument. Wouldn't it be so great to have the three of us both singing _and_ playing those songs?" 

"Yeah, it would be!" said Dale, nodding and smiling with his hand on his chin. "We'd need a good band name for something like that, though..."

"Hmmm..." Matt stared at his shoes as he tried to think of a potential name.

"Maybe something like 'The ACME Aces'?" Dale wondered. "I know it doesn't have that great of a punch, but it's just a brainstorm..."

"What about 'The Daring Detectives'?" Susan suggested.

"Mmmm, that's better," said Dale, "but I still don't think it quite nails what makes us, well, _us._ "

At that moment, an idea of his own popped into Matt's head.

"How about 'The Carmen Catchers'?"

Dale and Susan stared at Matt with wide, intense smiles. Instantly, they knew he had hit upon a winner.

_"Yes,"_ said Dale, pointing at Matt. "That's the name, right there. The Carmen Catchers...it's perfect!"

"And not just for a band!" said Susan. "'The Carmen Catchers'? I don't think that's unusual enough that we couldn't call ourselves that all the time!"

"Well, either way," said Dale, "we can't really start calling ourselves that until each of us has, y'know, actually _caught_ Carmen Sandiego at least once. But once that happens, that is absolutely what we will be from then on: the Carmen Catchers!"

"Carmen Catchers! Best friends forever!" Susan jumped in excitement.

"Absolutely!" said Matt, clenching his fists in anticipation with a huge smile on his face. "I can't wait to get home so I can get back to practicing."

"Why wait?" said Susan. "I have a case up on my computer right now that I left open before I went to the school battlefield. You can practice on that, right here with us!"

"Really?" Matt asked.

"Well, let's go! Lead the way!" said Dale.

Susan led the trio into a neighboring room and over to where a desktop computer was set up. Matt immediately recognized the layout of the GizmoTapper 586-LC showing on the monitor: from the face of its voice, the A.I. Dee Jaye, to the Map Button, the battery meter, the main screen and the smaller Chief's screen, and the wanted poster area, it was all there.

And it was very much in use as well. The wanted poster already had seven out of the nine total pieces of the crook's picture set in place. Though incomplete, the large amount of red in what was there instantly tipped Matt off that the picture was of none other than V.I.L.E.'s own head honcho. The main screen showed a still shot of an ocean panorama, with a few islands in the distance. The Chief's screen displayed a small graphic surrounded by a multipoint star glowing orange and yellow, one Matt had never seen before in this game.

"What kind of clue is that?" he asked, sitting down in the computer chair with Dale and Susan standing on either side of him. "It looks like the 'No Gloom' signs we see in some of the city's restaurants, but with a Pikachu instead."

He took the mouse and clicked on the graphic, hearing Dee Jay say, "No Pokémon," in response.

"'No Pokémon?'" Matt stared at the screen before looking at his friends. "As in an entire country with no Pokémon? Wai—Exactly where in the world has she gone to now?"

"Way out of the way," said Susan, pointing at a text field under the main screen. "See where we are?"

"...'De-color Islands'?" Matt replied, trying to read the name displayed by the GizmoTapper. "So what, are these islands black-and-white, or do they suck away the color of other stuff?"

Dale chuckled. "Not 'De-color'; _Decolore._ "

"Yep, this area is much closer to the Unova region than to us," said Susan. "It's even further away from here than the Orange Islands are!"

"I guess that would make sense," said Matt, looking at the clue on the smaller screen, still somewhat shocked, "but still... _no_ Pokémon? None at _all?_ "

"I remember the first time I saw that clue, too," said Dale with a nod. "I couldn't believe my eyes, either. Or my ears. Or my parents. But they're not kidding. There are actually places out there in the world that have absolutely no Pokémon in them. Not a one!"

Matt stared silently at the computer monitor for a few more seconds. Soon, however, he caught sight of the four magnifying glass symbols to the right of the "Decolore Islands" text. All four were dimmed, indicating that all four clues in the image above had been found.

"So, 'No Pokémon' is one of the clues," he observed. "What were the other three, Susan?"

His friend produced a piece of paper and handed it to him. "I wrote them down on this before leaving, in case I forgot them. And I'm happy I did, because I kind of forgot them."

Matt looked the paper over. Four words were written on it: "Castle", "Toretis Turtle", and "Deer".

"Wait a sec, what's a 'deer'?" he asked. "I've never gotten a clue like that."

"Think Stantler," Dale said. "Or Deerling or Sawsbuck. It's that kind of a creature, y'know?"

Matt nodded to himself before putting the paper down and taking the computer mouse. "Okay, then; let's pull up the map and see where we need to go."

He clicked on the Map button. Another screen slid into view, coming down over the main one, the Chief's one, the text field, and the in-progress wanted poster like the retractable projection screens all his school classrooms had. Once it stopped, a large map faded into view.

Matt's eyes widened. "...How have I never ever seen this map before, either?" he asked, looking at the areas and their arrangement in relation to each other on the screen. "For how much I play this game, it sure seems like there's a lot I still haven't come across."

"It might just be luck," said Susan. "I mean, I've had maps with Kanto, Johto, and the Orange Islands plenty of times, but you're the only one I know of that's ever gotten that one map with _just_ those three regions."

Matt thought about that and nodded as he studied the map. The Decolore Islands were a very wide spread of islands that took most of the central space, so much so that all the other countries visible on the map were poking in from various points along its edge. Every region had a differently colored tag pointing to it, containing its name, and over that, a collection of four different graphics, each set differing from those of the other regions by at least one picture. The Decolore Islands were the only exception, having only a magnifying glass over its name, as would have been the case for any other country the player might currently be in when looking at the world map.

Matt looked closely at the quartets of images. He knew that to figure out where Carmen had gone, he had to choose the country whose set included all four of the clues Susan had found by combing through the shot on the main screen.

"There we go!" he said, looking at a region directly across from where Unova was situated. Besides the 'No Pokémon' graphic he had seen before, the other images were a medieval castle and two different creatures, one closely resembling a Squirtle, and the other looking a lot like a Stantler.

Matt moved the mouse and clicked on the country. All the other tags disappeared except for those of the country he just selected and the group of islands he was currently at.

"Travel arrangements confirmed," said Dee Jaye, "to the Mushroom Kingdom: a country where humans, despite being native, make up a staggeringly dismal .3% of the population."

"Wow!" said Dale.

"So who makes up the rest?" Matt wondered.

* * *

"How did you know to come for us?" Chikorita asked. The quartet of Mushroom Kingdom residents were back in Matt's home village, inside the Post Fortress. The Grass-type Pokémon stood on a videophone sitting not too far from the entrance of the small embattlement, in front of its screen, with Goombella in the seat.

"It didn't take a rocket scientist for us to see you were just barely holding yourselves together," said the girl Goomba. "We were on our way pretty much right after Matt hung up."

Chikorita looked over to the other side of the fortress. A large counter ran the diameter of the room from one side all the way to the other. Behind it, Parakarry was picking up, stacking, and filing away dozens of letters into several different letterboxes set up against the wall. In front of it and off in the corner, Matt stood over a large, quietly whirring copying machine, his smartphone hooked up to it by a cable.

He snatched up a piece of paper out of the machine as soon as it was released. Printed on it was the photo he had taken of Bowser powering up the Goombas with the Super Leaves.

"Got an empty flying envelope, Parakarry?" the Defender asked.

Parakarry flew over and handed Matt an open envelope with small white wings. "At least you figured out how Bowser's troops wound up with Tanooki Tails," he said as Matt inserted the picture printout into the envelope.

"Pity that's the _only_ thing I got from this," said Matt. He licked the flap of the envelope, folded it over and sealed it, and then held it up over his head. The wings began to flap, and the small parcel took to the air and flew right out the Post Fortress entrance. "Hopefully that thing finds Mario quickly."

He turned back to the others. "But that journey did _not_ go well. I didn't recover any Super Leaves, I didn't beat Bowser, literally all I got out of that ordeal was that picture."

"Not all," said Goombella. "You got yourself a shoulder injury, too!"

Matt looked at the tear in his shirt and the matching slice in his skin underneath it. Chikorita stared at the wound as well, a look of silent concern on her face.

"You're gonna need to let that heal for a few days," said Parakarry. "Leave the Super Leaf collecting to us."

"Hey, speaking of Super Leaves," Matt said, "do we have an update on the Tail Tree yet?"

"That's actually part of why we originally called you," Parakarry said. "Mario sent one of the Toads he took with him back here to tell us about what they found."

"And?"

"The Tail Tree's been stripped completely bare, and Bowser's made off with the princess for the hundred bazillionth time," Goombella finished.

"And you were planning to ask me to go out and help Mario?" Matt asked, a mix of hope and dismay in his voice.

"Emphasis on 'were'," said Goombella. "You're not going anywhere now that your shoulder's messed up, and even if it weren't, Parakarry and I pretty much scrapped that idea after seeing you fail miserably in defeating Bowser."

_Oh, come the heck _on!__ Matt thought, clenching his fists and his jaw. _If I'd known that was gonna happen, I never would've gone out to begin with!_

"You realize your own impulsiveness is working against you," said Parakarry, seeing Matt's silent frustration. "As well as the fact that the amount of errors you make on an adventure is still on par with the amount of letters I lose on my mail runs. You've been a Defender for almost three and a half years now, and you've had a lot of experience in that time..."

He paused. "...And yet you don't seem to have any experience."

Matt stared blankly back at the Paratroopa mail carrier. "Quit with the logic bombing," he finally said. "You and Goombella aren't training me anymore."

"Really?" Goombella asked. "'Cause I totally feel the opposite. I can't see how you can screw yourself over so insanely often and not seem to take anything away from it. Honestly, I don't think you're all that different from the way you were your first day as an actual Defender."

Matt said nothing.

"Now go home and rest that shoulder," Goombella finished. "That's what the princess would say if she were here."

Matt stayed where he was for a few seconds, but finally turned and unplugged his phone from the copier and headed for the doorway. Chikorita jumped down from the Post Fortress's videophone and followed him outside.

Matt stared up at the sky as he walked slowly to his villa. Chikorita walked beside him, looking silently up at him.

"Thinking about your performance?" she asked once they were at the front door.

"...Nah, I'm just shocked at how long it's been since the last time Bowser kidnapped Princess Peach," said Matt, looking at the date displayed on his phone's screen. "November 13? That's almost two full months!"

Chikorita blinked in bemusement. "Is that a record?" she asked.

"I don't think so," Matt replied, opening the door and letting Chikorita go in ahead of him, "but it's certainly the longest we've gone between kidnappings in quite some time."


	8. 1-8: All Your Forest Are Belong to Us

A squirrel poked its head out of a knothole in the trunk of a tree. Outside, the branches of the forest swayed gently in the air, the sunrays reflecting through the leaves as they quietly rustled. Birds could be heard chirping all around him, as well as the occasional crow cawing.

The squirrel ran out onto a nearby branch, looking to see if there were any acorns or other food around. Going back to the tree and running up the trunk, he jumped to the branch of an adjacent tree and scampered across it over the forest below.

He didn't cover much distance before stopping. The large striped leaf with eyes sitting in his way on the bough commanded his attention. He stared at it in awestruck confusion. It was unlike any leaf he had ever seen before in his life. What kind of a leaf had eyes like him?

Cautiously, the squirrel crept up to the leaf and gingerly reached out to it. The eyes continued staring at him, completely neutral in their expression yet still managing to give him an unsettled feeling deep down inside.

His claws touched the leaf.

Nothing happened.

Feeling a little more confident, he placed his entire other front paw on it.

_POOF!_

The flash of smoke startled the squirrel enough for him to fall off the branch. He plummeted helplessly down towards the forest floor, arms and tail flailing wildly. It was a few seconds before the small rodent realized that he was falling at a much slower speed than usual, and he felt as if he was being held up by the tail. Finally gathering the wits to look around, he noticed almost immediately that his tail was now colored identically to the leaf, alternating lighter and darker stripes just like a raccoon's tail. Another split-second inspection of himself revealed that his fur had also changed color, as well as texture. It was as if his fur had been entirely switched out for that of some other animal.

The squirrel reacted in shocked horror upon realizing the transformation he had undergone, but it quickly changed into beaming. He was flying—well, more like floating, down through the air almost like the birds, descending in a much more controlled fashion than he ever thought would have been possible for a freefalling squirrel like himself.

Steering himself to a lower branch on the tree, he touched down on it and peered out into the woods in front of him. This new floating ability could be a big convenience and even a big help to him if he figured out how to use it right. Perhaps he would now be able to glide through the air from tree to tree like his flying squirrel cousins?

He decided to try it. Leaping off his perch, he wagged his tail and soared across the forest. As he continued his flight, he spotted two animals on the ground below: a fawn and a rabbit, staring up at him with faces of pure astonishment.

"Wow, look at that, Bambi!" said the rabbit, pointing as the squirrel glided over their heads and continued on into the woods. "That squirrel is flying, and it's not a flying squirrel!"

"Yeah, I see!" Bambi replied. "It's got the body of a squirrel, but the fur and tail of a raccoon! How did _that_ come about?"

"I dunno," the rabbit mused, "but I'd sure love to find out!"

The rabbit hopped on through the forest with Bambi following behind. Rounding a bush, the pair stopped upon seeing a duo of skunks, the larger of which was just disappearing into the shrubbery behind them. Bambi saw the same raccoon-like fur and tail on it before it left his sight.

The other skunk turned and blinked in surprise at seeing them. "Bambi! Thumper!" it exclaimed.

"Heya, Flower!" said the rabbit. "Who was the other skunk?"

"Oh, that was my mama," said Flower. "I don't know how she did it, but she seems to have a raccoon's fur and tail now!"

"We just saw a squirrel with the same fur and tail fly over us," Thumper said.

"A flying squirrel?" Flower tilted his head.

"No, a regular squirrel! A plain old squirrel got the same exact things your mama did, and he was able to fly with them!"

Flower's jaw dropped.

"I know!" Thumper said with a wide grin and a nod. "Crazy, isn't it?"

"What I don't understand," said Bambi, "is how that can even happen in the first place. I mean, there should be no way for an animal to change their fur or their tail, let alone have both of those happen to two completely different kinds of animals in the exact same way!"

"Somethin's goin' on," said Thumper, crossing his front paws and tapping his foot. "This is way too unlikely to be a coincidence."

"What're you thinking?" Bambi asked. "You think even more of the animals here have also had this happen to them?"

"Yeah!" Thumper jumped and started thumping his foot much more rapidly. "We should go and see who else has raccoon fur and tails! ...Besides the raccoons."

"Save yourself the time," said a voice.

Bambi, Thumper, and Flower all turned around to see a young fawn walking towards them. She looked a lot like Bambi, save for blue eyes, lighter fur color, and a slightly more slender build. Alongside her, Chikorita was coming up to the group as well, her head leaf waving behind her.

"Faline!" said Bambi in surprise.

The other fawn smiled at him and batted her eyes a couple of times. Bambi couldn't stop himself from quietly gulping in uneasiness. Whenever her attention was on him, the Young Prince almost always seemed to get butterflies in his stomach.

"Whaddaya mean, 'save ourselves the time'?" Thumper asked, eyebrow cocked.

"I was just telling Faline about this," said Chikorita. "All those raccoon tails and fur you're seeing on the other animals? They're all because of a special kind of leaf that's been floating far and wide, both inside and outside of your forest."

Bambi's eyes widened. "A _leaf!?_ " he said.

Chikorita nodded. "It's from the Tail Tree, a very special tree that grows in another part of the Mushroom Kingdom, way away from here, and it's what we outside your forest call a Super Leaf. Any animal that touches it gets the raccoon-like fur and tail you've seen, and it allows them to... sort of fly through the air, but maybe a better word is 'glide'. Kinda like a flying squirrel, now that I think about it."

"And it can do that to anyone?" Flower asked.

"Anyone whose species is native to the Mushroom Kingdom," Chikorita replied. "I'm a Pokémon, so it won't work on me. But any of you? Definitely."

"So if this special tree is so far away, how did these leaves get all the way over here in the first place?" said Faline.

"Do you guys remember that huge thunderstorm about nine or so nights ago?" Chikorita said.

"Oh." Thumper grimaced. "Yeah, I had to spend that whole night with all four of my sisters clinging to me at once while trying to keep them from getting too scared of it."

Bambi glanced sideways at his friend.

"Well, that same storm was powerful enough to strip the Tail Tree completely bare," Chikorita continued. "Not a single Super Leaf stayed attached to it. They've been flying literally _everywhere_ ever since. Matt and I actually went out the morning after the storm and tried to make sense of the whole mess, but we couldn't do all that much by ourselves."

"Where _is_ Matt, anyway?" said Bambi, looking confusedly at Chikorita. "I don't see either of you on your own all that often."

"Princess Peach called him to a meeting at her castle early this morning," replied the Pokémon. "It left me with the day all to myself, so I decided to come here and check up on how the Moonview Forest was handling the Super Leaves."

"A meeting for what?"

Chikorita started to answer, but stopped, her mouth crinkling. She glanced at the ground, and then off to one side.

"...I don't know, actually," she finally said. "He didn't say anything pertaining to it; in fact, now I'm wondering if even _he_ knows why he was called to the castle."

* * *

Matt felt the medical pad taped onto his shoulder with his fingers as he walked towards Princess Peach's Castle. The gash he had gotten from his castle adventure a week and a half ago was finally starting to heal, but it was still sensitive and vulnerable enough to require some protection from the elements.

Sunlight sparkled on the surface of the moat below as he crossed the bridge and reached the front doors. Grabbing one of the knobs and turning it, he pulled the door open and looked inside.

In the middle of the main hall was a large long table ringed with chairs, almost all of them occupied. Matt saw several familiar faces contained within the group.

_Yoshi, Mario, Goombella, Parakarry,_ he thought as he spotted each individual, _Toadsworth, Toadette, Toadbert, Toad, Princess Daisy..._

"Matt!"

_And, of course, Princess Peach,_ Matt finished as he saw his ruler walking over to him.

"You came!" she said. "I'm so glad you were able to make it!"

"Yep," said Matt, "I came. Can I go now?"

Princess Peach snorted. "Nonsense!" she said, taking Matt by the arm and walking him over to a vacant chair. "Have a seat, please."

Matt plopped down into the chair and sighed to himself as Peach walked around and took her position at the head of the table.

_How am I gonna get myself out of this?_ he thought as the princess began to speak.

* * *

A rustling came from some nearby bushes. Chikorita turned her head to see who was there, and her eyes widened in surprise as Matt came out to join them.

"Matt!?" Bambi exclaimed, noticing the human as well and trotting over to meet him.

"Hey, Bambi," said Matt. "And Chikorita."

"I thought you were at Princess Peach's Castle," said Chikorita, head tilted in perplexity.

"I was. Not anymore."

He started to say something else, but was distracted by a rustling from some bushes across from the ones he had come out of, behind Faline, Flower, and Thumper.

Another fawn emerged out into their sight. He had much darker fur than either Bambi or Faline and was definitely older, having no spots on his body and two budding antlers growing out between his ears. His green eyes had a very cocky look to them.

Faline took one look at the newcomer and groaned quietly. Chikorita glanced at her, then went back to eyeing the older fawn quizzically as he sauntered towards the group. She had never seen him before. It seemed like the others might have, though judging by Faline's reaction, it seemed unlikely that he was a friend...

"Hey, beautiful," he said to Faline. "How've you been?"

The younger fawn rolled her eyes. Flower tried to hide behind his tail, but Thumper just crossed his front paws and scowled back at him.

"What do you want?" said the little rabbit in a huff.

"To not see the rest of you, for starters," the older deer sneered. "Honestly, Faline, why do you insist on hanging out with these losers?"

Faline simply grimaced back at him, saying nothing. The unnamed fawn grinned smugly and his eyes wandered briefly before falling on Bambi.

"Ah, Young Prince," he said politely; perhaps a little _too_ politely. Bambi's ears began to lower and he took a half step back as the other fawn walked up to him, still keeping up that grin. "Long time no see, huh? Been up to anything lately?"

Bambi opened his mouth to say something, but the other fawn cut him off.

"I see you're still antlerless," he said, following the sentence with a chuckle. "Don't you think they should've started growing in by now?"

Now it was Bambi's turn to grimace at the older deer, whose attention had meandered over to Matt.

"...So, what's up with this guy?" he thought, eyeing the human with a cocked eyebrow. "...Or maybe, what _is_ this guy?"

Bambi turned his head to look at Matt himself. The Defender was staring back at the third fawn with only a slight frown. No emotions, no facial expressions, he wasn't even blinking.

"...Something wrong, Matt?" the Young Prince asked. He seemed unusually stoic, even by his standards.

Matt shook his head. "Nah, it's just that I haven't seen any unfamiliar faces in quite a long time," he said, watching the group of animals.

"Wait, you don't know who anybody here is?" Bambi asked incredulously.

"Nonono, I recognize Thumper, Flower, and Faline," Matt said, pointing at each as he spoke before looking back at the third fawn.

"...But who's the obnoxious one?" he asked.

_"HEY!"_ the fawn yelled back. "The name's Ronno, Mr. Smart-Mouth!"

"'Ronno'?" Matt did not look impressed in the slightest.

"Yeah! And I also got the boys here." Ronno lowered his head and made a head-butting gesture twice, each time turning his head off to one side. "Stab, and Jab!"

"...Terrific, I gotta deal with three of you," Matt said in one of the flattest, most annoyed voices Chikorita had ever heard from him.

Thumper shuddered. "There's a nightmare for ya. Three Ronnos? That'd be like...three Ronnos!"

Ronno glared down at the bunny. "Hey, I'm three times scarier than you'll ever be!"

"Hah!" Thumper taunted. "I'd like to see you try when a turtle sent you running home to your mama the last time we saw you!"

"All right," Ronno snorted in anger, "I'll prove it to ya!"

He scraped the ground with his hoof a couple of times, and then charged the rabbit taunting him.

Thumper hopped to the side and let his assailant go straight past him and charge halfway into a large, particularly thick bush behind him. Cries of "Ah, ow, ouch!" started coming from inside it as the fawn fought to free himself.

"Well, I guess that takes care of that," said Matt, staring at the struggling flank poking out from the shrub. "If only every annoyance in the world would do the same."

"I say let's just leave him," Faline snorted before turning and walking away.

"I got no problem with that," said Thumper, following her.

"Neither do I," Matt agreed, also following after them.

Flower said nothing, but hastily scampered to catch up with the departing trio. Chikorita and Bambi were the last two to start walking away, but Bambi paused for a brief second to look back at Ronno as he continued to struggle fruitlessly inside the bush. He let out a perturbed breath and trotted away to join the others.

"So is your meeting over?" Chikorita asked Matt as the group of six walked through the woods.

"Doubt it," said Matt. "It's probably still going now."

Chikorita stared disbelievingly up at him. "Wait, so why are you here?"

"All the meeting was about was all of us discussing what damage and trouble we've seen the Koopa Troop cause with the Super Leaves' power since the storm. It was just trying to figure out the overall scope of the nuisance from all our individual accounts combined. And something about Luigi going missing, too; I wasn't really listening. But anyway, it was just a waste of time and I wanted to get out of there so I could actually work towards getting the problem under control."

"So how'd you get out without anyone noticing?" Bambi asked.

"Easy!" Matt grinned. "All it took was my smartphone, a Wilhelm Scream sound clip, and one of the overhead chandeliers, and I had a diversion. Though I _am_ wondering if they've cleaned up the mess and resumed the actual meeting yet..."

Chikorita stared at her owner, wondering exactly what he had done, but his attention had moved to the treetops above.

"Well, I don't think any...what did you call them...Koopa Troop creatures are here in the forest," said Bambi, "but those leaves definitely are."

"I can see that," Matt said with a nod, spotting several Super Leaves mixed in with those of even just the Moonview Forest trees in the immediate area.

Bambi and his friends looked up as well just in time to see a squirrel bestowed with a Tanooki Suit leap off a branch and start soaring through the air with its tail.

"And it looks like the animals have already got their hands on some of them, too...or should I say 'claws'?" Matt added, watching the Tanooki squirrel flying over his head.

Then a blast of green fire shot out of the trees and struck it.

The animals around Matt gasped as the Tanooki outfit vanished to reveal its normal fur and tail, followed by the now-powerless squirrel falling out of the air to the ground below. Matt watched it disappear behind some bushes and heard the faint splat! of it hitting the dirt.

"What was that!?" exclaimed Bambi.

A fit of maniacal laughter resonated through the trees.

_And who in the heck is that?_ Matt wondered, starting to look through the trees in the direction of the laugh.

"I don't like the sound of that laugh," Flower whispered uneasily to Thumper.

"Hey, whatever it is, we're all brave enough to face it!" said Thumper with an encouraging grin, wink, and nudge to his friend's shoulder.

"Oh, I seriously doubt that," Matt snorted, getting their attention as he crept a few steps forward through the foliage. "You forest animals always run away at the first hint of trouble; you don't even bother to stick around and see whether or not it actually is. There's a word for that; it's called 'coward'."

The animals looked at each other while Matt continued forward as quietly as he could, eventually taking position behind a large tree trunk a few yards away from them. After a second or two, Bambi broke away from the small group and trotted up to him.

"Hey," the Young Prince reproached. "Do you think you could be a little nicer to my friends?"

Matt looked out past Bambi at his fellow forest animals, who were all staring back at him. Flower looked hurt, Thumper looked irritated, and Faline looked both hurt _and_ irritated.

"...Probably not," Matt replied.

Thumper, Flower, and Faline seemed taken aback by his response, and they exchanged confused glances amongst themselves. Bambi did not appear to notice.

"Why not?" he asked. "You treat me..."

He paused.

"...reasonably well."

"Yeah, but you're..." Matt gestured vaguely at the deer as if wanting to highlight some aspect of him but unable to pin down exactly what.

"...you," he finished after a few seconds.

The expression he saw on Bambi's face looked just like the one his mother had given him after he tried unsuccessfully to pass off a red paint stain on a wall in his home as colored water. He could practically hear Bambi thinking, "Really, Matt?"

Matt turned to look at Chikorita, hoping she'd back him up, but she was giving him the same exact look.

The demented cackle rang out through the forest again, much louder this time. Slowly, Matt peeked out from behind his tree into a small clearing behind it.

Two Koopas stood in the clearing fairly close to them, their backs turned to Matt and the others. They were nothing like the regular Koopa Troopas Matt saw so often in his line of work; these two were considerably larger in size and had spikes on their shells much like Bowser did.

One of them, the tall and lanky one, furthered his resemblance to Bowser even more by wearing the same black, spike-adorned cuffs on his wrists as the Koopa King. His shell was a much lighter green than was typical for green-shelled Koopas, and it matched the color of his hair, which was styled such that it reminded Matt of a carrot stalk. He had four fangs protruding out of his mouth, and he wore large glasses containing blue eyes that felt to Matt like those of a mad scientist.

The other Koopa had a much more feminine appearance, wearing a bow and high heels that both matched the pink color of her shell. She also wore loose, golden bracelets on her wrists, and a necklace of red beads around her neck. Like her companion, she had blue eyes, although hers did not have the crazed, mad-scientist look that his did. Her cheeks were also more rounded, similar to Bowser Jr, and she appeared to be wearing pink lipstick.

"Whoa, what kind of Koopas are those?" Bambi asked, peering out cautiously at them himself. Chikorita crept forward to observe them as well, but the other three forest animals hung behind within the cover of the forest undergrowth.

"Koopalings," said the Leaf Pokémon upon getting a good look. "They're a group of seven siblings that are pretty powerful and high up in the ranks of the Koopa Troop."

"Siblings? Does that include Bowser Jr?" Bambi asked, thinking back to the bratty Koopa child he had met in the fortress on Friendship Lake.

Matt crinkled his lips. "...I'm not sure, actually. I thought for certain once that that _was_ the case and he was an eighth sibling to the others, but now not so much. No one's sure, really; no one that's not a Koopaling, anyway."

He stopped talking as the lanky Koopaling charged up a wand he was holding with energy, the color of which was the same green as what Matt had seen before. The wand tip glowed and emitted outlines of squares, circles, and triangles. Then, with a whirl and forward flick, he shot a burst of fiery energy across the clearing.

Matt cocked an eyebrow as the green fireball streaked through the air, radiating the shape outlines in its wake, and wondered what the Koopa Troop soldier was aiming at. Watching the energy burst's trajectory, he looked ahead and saw a Tanooki-suited skunk, its attention occupied by the berries on a bush, blissfully unaware of what was coming for it.

At least, until the blast hit it, shedding the Tanooki fur and sending it scurrying for cover with a yelp.

Bambi took a breath while the Koopaling cackled giddily at his attack, prompting his sister to turn away from where she was looking into the forest and towards him.

"Would you quit wasting time already, Iggy?" she said. "We still have a job to do, in case you forgot."

"Hey, it's not like you and I are doing anything right now, Wendy," Iggy replied. "Might as well have a little fun while we're here! Hehe!"

"'Fun?'" Bambi murmured in outrage. "Hurting us is his idea of fun!?"

"You sound surprised," said Matt unenthusiastically. "The Koopa Troop is always up to no good of some sort. If they aren't abducting the Princess, they're making life miserable for someone, somewhere. It's what they do."

"This is not a laughing matter!" Wendy scolded her brother. "We've searched this forest for months upon months with absolutely nothing to show for it. We need results, and we need them NOW!"

"Oh, they're playing this game again, are they?" said Matt with a scoff. "Why can't they get it into their brains that if you conduct over a dozen searches on an area and they all come up fruitless, the thing you're looking for is probably _not there?_ ...Oh wait, I forgot that they're completely nuts."

"I still wonder exactly what it is they're so desperate to find here," said Chikorita. "Whatever it is, they clearly think it's a big deal."

"I'm gonna go in for a closer look," said Matt.

He started to step out into the clearing, but hesitated and looked up the tree he had been hiding behind.

"Actually, make that 'a higher look'."

He jumped and grabbed hold of a large branch just out of his reach over his head. He quickly pulled himself up onto it and jumped again to grab another just-out-of-reach branch further up the tree. Once he was standing on top of that one, he peered down on the clearing from his new position.

"So why are they here in a clearing all by themselves?" he asked himself. "They don't even have any machines with them. Are they waiting for someone? Or something?"

The wind picked up so rapidly that Matt nearly lost his balance on the branch. Bambi and Faline braced themselves and turned their heads away, while Flower jumped into Thumper's paws. Chikorita's head leaf flapped and the canopies of the trees rustled as they spotted a large oval shadow moving across the distant forest floor towards the clearing.

"Okay, what's going on now?" Chikorita wondered, trying to see through the treetops. However, it wasn't until the big shadow entered the clearing that she and the other forest animals saw what was stirring up the wind.

"Whoa, what is _that?_ " asked Thumper in awe.

"'Airship' is what you called them, right?" said Bambi with a glance at Chikorita, watching the massive wooden flying boat coming into their sight from over the treetops.

"You got it," the Leaf Pokémon said with a tense exhale and squint of her eyes.

"That..." Faline hesitated as she tried to find the words to describe the sight in front of her, "...is a big thing."

Matt watched the airship descend into the clearing and settle into a hovering position at just above the height of his perch, slowly spinning around in midair.

"There's our ride!" said Iggy, eyeing the anchor hanging by a chain off the side of the ship's stern.

The anchor began to lower as the airship continued to sluggishly rotate in place. Unfortunately, the stern was rather close to some of the trees at the clearing's edge, and as it passed by, the dropping anchor swung a little too far into them and caught on a large branch. The chain pulled taut and the ship stalled in midair.

"What's going on?" Iggy asked, looking up at the snagged line.

Wendy looked up, too, and immediately realized what had happened. "Get that anchor untangled!" she yelled.

Matt braced himself against the trunk his branch was attached to as the airship's propellers sped up, upping the gusting wind significantly. The branch the anchor had snagged creaked as the ship tried to pull it free. For about seven seconds, nothing else happened.

_SNAP!_

The tree limb broke off and fell to the ground below while the anchor went hurtling through the air, directly at Matt.

_**Oh, crap...**_ the Defender thought, right before the mass of metal struck him dead-on and knocked him right out of the tree. He fell face-down on the grass below, catching the attention of both Koopalings.

"Oh, hey, look!" said Iggy in sarcastic surprise. "It's Mario's lackey!"

Matt picked his head up and spat out some dirt. "'Lackey'!?" he said indignantly, jumping back to his feet. "Only bad guys are called lackeys, Iggy! ...Which would still let you call me one, now that I think about it."

"Wonderful," Wendy groaned. "As if we didn't have enough hassles on our hands, we have to contend with this idiot now, too."

"I'll make you eat those words, Wendy!" said Matt, though he did not sound offended.

He started running across the forest floor, straight for the brother–sister duo.

"Oh my," said Iggy mockingly, "what _ever_ shall we do?"

Wendy grinned. "What we always do to those who stand in our way."

Right as Matt was halfway to his targets, a large cannonball crashed through the tree canopy from off to the side. The snapping branches clued him in to the incoming projectile just in time to jump out of its way. The cannonball struck the ground and exploded in a small flash of fire, leaving a gouge in the dirt where it hit.

Chikorita looked in the direction the stray shot had come from. The first thing she noticed was another big shadow creeping along the ground. As she and the others looked up, it wasn't long before another airship came out from behind the treetops over the small clearing.

"Blast them to Kingdom Come!" Wendy shouted.

With that, the two floating vessels unleashed a hail of shots down onto the forest.

"Yikes!" Thumper screamed. "Everyone, run!"

The Young Prince, his friends, and Chikorita all bolted off into the woods in different directions just before one cannonball sailed right through the spot where they had been situated. Matt immediately skidded to a stop, turned to the left, and started running for the trees, only just barely able to stay ahead of the massive projectiles as they rained down and blew up.

The trees started taking the hits once Matt was out of the clearing, but he didn't stop running. At least, not until he spotted yet another large oval shadow on the ground that he was approaching.

"Oh, come the heck on, a _third_ airship?" he said, changing his running trajectory without even bothering to look up. However, when he spotted not one, but two additional similar shadows on the forest floor some distance away, he stopped and looked up through the trees.

His jaw dropped. "Holy Monty Moley..."

Several airships occupied the air above the Moonview Forest. Some were just over the treetops, others were higher up in the sky, but there were a _lot_ of them. Matt could count about 14 just in the narrow window of sky the trees were currently giving him. With those kinds of numbers in that amount of visible sky, it was entirely likely that Iggy and Wendy had an entire fleet staked out above the woods.

"How do they bring so many airships somewhere so quickly and we don't see them coming until after they arrive?" he wondered. "It's like they freakin' teleport them!"

He heard more shots ring out, and cannonballs came soaring down amongst the trees all around him. Animals scampered and scattered, running from the explosions the shells caused upon hitting something while simultaneously trying to avoid the additional multitudes that were coming down unrelentingly from the sky, each in the wake of the one before.

Matt tried to resume his own run through the forest, but hesitated to take that first bound when a chipmunk dashed beneath his feet, nearly getting stepped on. A quail and a line of her children zoomed past him an instant later, followed by a couple of rabbits and several birds flying frantically through the trees. A squirrel rushed up a nearby tree trunk, jumping to another tree and disappearing into the leaves above.

Watching them, Matt realized they probably didn't know where to run any more than he did. The Koopalings had launched an offensive on what seemed like the entire Moonview Forest; where do you start with combating something as big as that? Ordinarily he would try to call for help, but he had been forced to leave his smartphone behind at Peach's Castle as part of the diversion he crafted to get out of the meeting, leaving him without any means to contact backup.

His mind stopped spinning its wheels when he noticed something else touching down near the airship shadow closest to him, a few dozen yards away. They were not cannonballs, but Koopa Troop. Specifically, a Hammer Bro and three Koopas.

He looked by another oval shadow just in time to see a group of Goombas land on the ground. He even spotted a few Paratroopas flying among the trees.

Then one of the Paratroopas spotted him. "Hey, there he is! Get him!"

Matt groaned in his head and braced for the imminent rush he was sure to get from the nearby troops. What he heard instead was another string of cannon shots. His eyes went wide and he was already in motion before realizing the nearby airship was firing down on him.

He jumped over a falling log and rushed straight ahead, plowing through any shrubbery or plants in his way. It seemed like the Koopa Troop had orders from Iggy and Wendy to fire at him on sight if they saw him. If that was the case, his best bet at surviving this was to try to stay hidden, be it in the foliage, or behind trees, or...

_THUD!_

Something nontrivial hit him in the side, throwing him off both his trajectory and his balance. He barely missed running headlong into a tree trunk as he tried to stop himself.

He looked behind him to see Bambi staggering to his hooves from laying on his side on the ground.

"Oh, it's you," said Matt, catching his four-legged friend's attention.

"What's going on!?" he asked. "I thought I told you I wasn't interested in any more of your adventures!"

"It wouldn't matter even if you were," Matt replied. "In the Mushroom Kingdom, it's extremely easy to find an adventure because half the time, the adventure finds you."

Still more cannon shots resonated through the forest, loud and close. Bambi winced and folded his ears back as the thunderous din rang out. Matt looked through the woods, searching for the airship that was firing so that he and Bambi could avoid it.

He finally spotted it moving through the air just above the treetops. It must have been the one he had originally seen, because Wendy was standing up on the deck, while Iggy was riding the lowered anchor through the woods underneath the tree canopies, waving his wand and throwing fireball after fireball at the panicking animals below, laughing gleefully all the way.

"We need to find someplace safe, like, right now!" Bambi urged.

"No, I'd say right here is about the safest we can be right now," said Matt, watching the cannonballs and green energy spurts fly with wild abandon. "It doesn't look like they're actually going after anybody; they're just causing general panic. Which is odd, because they don't usually indulge in that kind of pointless torment; they're always working on some sort of goal."

They watched the unfolding mayhem for a few more seconds. The smaller animals darted back and forth over the grass and fallen leaves as Iggy's energy blasts bombarded the ground. One blast barely missed a fleeing raccoon and went sailing on to strike a group of large plants behind it. A petrified yelp reached Bambi's ears, and his limbs went rigid with dread upon realizing who that voice belonged to.

Faline jumped out from behind the plants. No longer protected, she galloped in near-blind panic away from the airship as fast as she could.

Her frantic movement caught Iggy's attention. Grinning and giggling wickedly, he pointed at the fleeing fawn as if marking her as a target.

Faline continued her desperate run away from her airborne assailants, only to have a couple of cannonballs come at her from the direction she was heading in. She turned and bolted off to her right as they hit the ground and exploded, but barely went five steps before nearly running into another incoming cannonball from that direction. She turned to the right again and began sprinting back towards Iggy's airship.

By then, Iggy had charged his wand again. Aiming for a spot some distance in front of his target, he sent a huge green ball of fire hurtling down to the ground, moving much faster than anything else Matt had seen him throw.

_"NO!"_ Bambi screamed.

Faline looked up in time to see what was coming for her, but she was unable to stop and her momentum carried her right into the impact zone. The fireball hit her head-on and exploded in a cloud of glowing shapes.

Matt held his breath as the energy began to dissipate, expecting the worst. But much to his surprise, when all of the circles, squares, and triangles had faded away to reveal the unfortunate young deer again, she didn't look injured at all. She was merely standing inside a dome of very-faintly tinted green energy, still cringing in anticipation of an attack that had already come and gone. Shape outlines sparsely emanated and faded from view around the edges.

"Hahahahahaha!" said Iggy, dancing on his anchor as his target finally opened her eyes and stared fearfully up at him. "I finally caught one! And it's a whitetail, too!"

He swung his wand upward, and the dome of energy rose a short way off the ground, lifting Faline right off her hooves and leaving her kicking and flailing helplessly in midair.

_That's weird,_ Matt thought, cocking an eyebrow. _Instead of a fireball, he conjured up a force field._

"We gotta go help her!" Bambi cried, managing to take half a bound out towards the chaotic scene before feeling Matt's hand grab him by the scruff of his neck.

"No, wait," he said. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why!?"

Matt could not even get a single word out before the two saw Ronno jump out into view from within the forest. "Don't worry, Faline!" he proclaimed. "I'll save you!"

He raced across the clearing on a beeline for the floating energy sphere before leaping off the ground and diving headfirst right into the center. As soon as he crossed the border, he slowed to a stop as if he had jumped into a floating bubble of water, and was left floating inside it as helplessly as Faline.

"...That's why," said Matt.

Ronno looked at the energy surrounding him and Faline. After trying fruitlessly to move through the air, he looked at his unamused co-captive and grinned sheepishly. "Heh, well, that didn't exactly go the way I wanted..."

He tried to lean in closer to Faline. "But hey, at least you got some company now."

Faline jabbed him in the chest with her hoof. "Get away from me!" she scoffed.

Her strike was forceful enough to push Ronno and herself in opposite directions, the force field holding them expanding slightly as they moved outward from the center and closer to the barrier's border. But like a giant, gentle rubber band, it soon shrank back and the two fawns drifted back into each other's space as if hanging by strings from the same point overhead. Faline tried to turn herself away from Ronno.

"Well, that completes Phase I of our plan," said Wendy. "We now have troops on the ground all through the Moonview Forest. It's time to commence Phase II."

"Roger that!" said Iggy as the chain his anchor was hanging by began to retract. He waved his wand and pointed it up at the airship, and the force field holding Ronno and Faline began following him up and out of the forest. The chain stopped retreating once Iggy was out of the trees, but the green energy sphere kept going until it was floating over the deck near Wendy. The propellers on the back of the flying vessel roared to life, and the ship sailed off over the forest.

"Oh no, this just got a whole lot worse!" Bambi fretted, his ears lowered in fear.

"Tell me about it," said Matt. "Invasion, captives, being outnumbered, being outgunned, we got ourselves a full-fledged _Die Hard_ situation here!"

"...'Die Hard'?" said Bambi worriedly. "That...doesn't sound very good."

"It's not. But luckily, there's a tried and true method for dealing with something like this."

"Really?" Bambi's ears perked and his eyes widened with hope. There was never anything quite like hearing that the dangerous, maybe even _deadly_ predicament you were in had a surefire solution that was known to consistently fix it. Matt's words had cut the Young Prince's nervousness down by at least half, which was really something given that his words usually doubled it in times past.

"Uh-huh," said Matt with a confident smirk and nod. "Step one is to stay hidden and make sure they can't find us. Long as we can keep that up, this'll be a cinch!"

Stay hidden and make sure they won't be found; in other words, do exactly what he and his forest friends have always done their whole lives in order to stay safe from Man. Bambi liked this plan already.


	9. 1-9: "Die Hard" in the Moonview Forest

Flower dashed frantically across the soil, trying not to get snagged on any bushes or other dense vegetation in his way. He had been trying desperately to get away from the horde of huge turtles that had descended into the forest, but it seemed like wherever he went, he was running straight for them. There was nowhere he could go where he would not be followed. No safe haven.

The small skunk finally slid to a stop and tried to bury himself in his tail. "Oh, why did it have to be turtles?" he whimpered. "They're so scary!"

An animal cry he had never heard before today, but had already become all too familiar to his ears, made him look up in terror. He quivered and screamed as three of the oversized reptiles ran straight for him.

And then he sprayed. In that moment of fright, Flower heard the faint squeal and felt his body releasing the smell his species was so infamous for.

The three bipedal turtles stopped almost right next to him. The foremost one clutched his throat and fell to the ground, while the other two covered their noses and took a few steps backwards.

A leaf came spinning into view from within the trees, striking one of the still-standing attackers on the cheek and knocking it out. His companion turned to look at where it had come from, but that was all he had time to do before Chikorita came soaring out through the air, landing hard on his head and making him retreat into his shell.

She landed next to her defeated foe before turning and running over to Flower. "Hey, Flower, you—?"

She recoiled and covered her face with her head leaf. "Oh, my goodness!" she choked out. "Did you spray those Koopas?"

Flower stared back at Chikorita, still trembling in fright. "I-uh, I think so," he stuttered. "But...but what's going on!?"

Chikorita let out an agitated cough. "I'm not quite sure, but what I _am_ quite sure about is that you've got unwanted company all through your forest, and it's gonna take a lot of work to kick 'em out."

Flower fidgeted uneasily.

"C'mon, let's go," said the Pokémon, gesturing behind her with her head. "We should find your friends before anything happens to them, and I need to get away from this horrible stench."

The two small animals started running through the woods, but they didn't cover much distance before something cast a shadow over them. They looked up and their eyes widened in surprise.

It was a cloud. A small cloud floating beneath the tree line instead of high up in the sky, and as if that wasn't weird enough, it also had eyes, just like the Super Leaves. One of the turtle intruders was riding on top of it, too, wearing what appeared to be swimming goggles over its small, beady eyes.

Flower watched the turtle on the cloud with much apprehension as it hovered here and there in the airspace, looking down at them. His mind kept running through the potential ways this unfamiliar enemy could do him harm.

"Get ready, Flower," Chikorita murmured. "When that Lakitu makes a move, follow the direction I run, got it?"

Finally, their airborne adversary pulled out a huge red ball, larger than his own head and covered in sharp, shiny spikes.

"Let's go! On the double!" Chikorita bolted straight ahead just as the Lakitu hurled the ball down at them. Flower was only too happy to sprint after her, but the terror and dread stayed with him as their assailant and his fluffy white ride casually floated along in pursuit of him and his protector.

* * *

The sounds of someone walking overhead reached the ears of a porcupine lounging inside the log he called home. Another trespassing hooligan, no doubt! The kids these days, they don't ever respect the property of others; they just cut through whenever they please, tracking mud all over the top of his home in the process. He probably had an unwanted visitor on his property at least once every 2–4 days.

The porcupine listened to the footsteps for a second to gauge where the intruder was on his log. Once he had a fairly certain idea, he ran down the log interior past the sounds of the steps to a loose section in the roof.

He jumped through the loose flap onto the roof outside to confront the trespasser. And then he paused.

A turtle shell, almost as big as he was and studded with huge spikes, sat in front of him. The porcupine wasn't even sure if this was what he had heard walking on his log. At least, not until he spotted the tail and two hind legs underneath the shell that told him this was in fact an animal, even if it was one he had never seen before.

The porcupine walked up to the visitor and yelled, "Get off my property, you big trespassing...whatever you are!"

The creature began to turn around, lumbering in place on four legs until it was facing him. Its shell border retracted up slightly in the front, allowing its head and the two intensely glowering eyes on it to poke out from underneath. It had no other facial features.

And it did not seem like it was about to leave.

"Well?" said the porcupine. "Whaddaya waiting for? I said get off my property!"

The spiky-shelled animal did not move, continuing to glare silently back at the porcupine. Soon, though, it turned off to one side and tried to walk past him.

"Oh no you don't!" The porcupine quickly shuffled over to cut the impudent interloper off. But it was not deterred and turned the other way, making another attempt to go around him.

"And where do you think you're goin'?" said the porcupine, moving to block his adversary's path a second time.

The shuffling back and forth went on a few more times. The other animal would keep trying to walk past the porcupine, and he would stand in the way and keep it from taking even a single step further onto his property. If it wanted to get across, it could turn back and go around. How hard could it be to show a little respect?

Several feet away, Matt parted some plants to let Bambi through to the bank of a stream that flowed underneath the log. The Defender came through behind him, and their eyes almost immediately fell on the stalemate.

"...Hmmph, looks like that porcupine and that Spiny are being pricks to each other," said Matt.

The Young Prince said nothing. He had gone up against that porcupine himself a couple of times, with varying degrees of success. And while he was not particularly fond of the grumpy old animal, he could not see any way in which squabbling with a creature completely foreign to his forest would end well for him.

"So how do we take care of a...'Spiny'?" he asked Matt. "I know you like to jump on your foes and all, but that creature doesn't exactly look, uh...jumpable."

"Definitely not," said Matt. "Spinies require a more indirect approach to defeat them without impaling yourself on its shell spikes. Matter of fact, in most cases, it's much more practical to just leave them alone and keep moving. That's what you'd rather do to begin with, right?"

Ordinarily, Matt would be right. But Bambi did not think that standing by and not intervening in a situation where one of his subjects' safety was on the line would be very princely of him. The forest animals depended on The Great Prince to keep them safe. It would be unthinkable for his own son not to follow that example.

They watched silently as the Spiny continued trying to get past the porcupine, turning back and forth with the porcupine moving likewise to keep himself in front of it.

"Hmmph, I'm getting tired of this," he said in a huff. "If you don't wanna leave, I'll make you leave!"

He tensed his body, making the myriad of quills that covered it all stand up, and then charged the trespasser, hitting the Spiny head-to-head.

The Spiny did not budge. At least, not until it started its own charge, pushing the porcupine back across the log with ease.

"Oh no, we need to help!" said Bambi.

"Why?" Matt asked. "I'm actually starting to enjoy this."

The territorial mammal tried to dig in his heels against the stronger, sturdier Spiny, but he was unable to slow it down until he hit a loose section of the log, which caved in slightly and provided him with a foothold to brace against, the other end of the wood piece rising off the log.

Some plants rustled on the opposite side of the water, further up the stream. Matt and Bambi looked over just in time to see Chikorita and Flower burst out from behind the vegetation and come sprinting frantically down the bank towards them. A Lakitu appeared overhead not far behind, floating after the running animals while throwing Spiny Eggs.

"Now, _those_ two we need to help," said Matt.

"No, we need to help all of them!" Bambi protested. "We have to find a way to save all three."

Matt tried to keep Bambi from seeing him roll his eyes. But the annoyed feeling didn't last long as his attention drifted back to the rotted log and the loose pieces of its top shifting around as the Spiny and porcupine continued butting heads.

"And I think I just thought of one!" he said as a grin creeped onto his face. A grin that almost made Bambi's fur stand on end, because there was nothing friendly about it in the slightest.

_Oh buck, what is he going to do?_ the Young Prince thought, gritting his teeth as Matt ran for the log.

He reached the end of the log right when Flower and Chikorita reached the opposite end on their side of the brook, the Lakitu still in hot pursuit. While they continued running past the log, Matt jumped onto it and started running across it, straight for the still-battling Spiny and porcupine. The former had managed to push the latter back a few more feet, but both barely had time to look up before the Defender took a huge leap over both of them, landing on the other end of the log piece they were on and stomping it _hard._

The porcupine screamed as he and his opponent were launched into the air over Matt's head, flying and striking the Lakitu just as it reached the log. The Koopa Troop soldier was knocked off his cloud and went flying straight into a tree trunk before he fell screaming to the forest floor below, landing on the back of his shell. The Spiny landed nearby, bouncing off the ground and traveling a few more feet before coming to a halt. Right behind it, the porcupine hit the dirt on his back like the Lakitu. His quills stuck in the ground and left him as helpless as the foe Matt had used him to take out.

Chikorita and Flower skidded to a stop upon seeing their assailant fall, looking back at Matt as he looked over the aftermath of his strike with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Looking at the tree the Lakitu hit, he suddenly noticed a Super Leaf gently floating down out of its leaves.

"Hey, I could use that!" he exclaimed, grabbing the leaf as soon as it was within his reach. A Tanooki Suit instantly materialized around him.

"Dagnabbit!" yelled the porcupine, flailing his limbs as Chikorita and Flower came back towards the log. "You rowdy hoodlums're gonna be the end of this forest, I'm tellin' ya!"

"If you're gonna tell me something, tell me something I haven't already heard a gazillion times, you cranky old geezer," said Matt in annoyance.

Chikorita tried to catch her breath as Bambi moved to join them, wading through the stream as everyone else regrouped.

"Hey, thanks for your help," Chikorita said to Matt once she had taken several deep breaths.

Matt nodded, but he could not say anything before Bambi broke in.

"Don't _ever_ do that again," said the Young Prince.

Matt turned to him. "What, use a forest animal against its will to take out a threat to it?"

Bambi paused. "...I was going to say 'smile horrendously', but don't ever do that again, either."

Matt stared at his friend in complete bewilderment.

"He's got a point, Matt," said Chikorita.

"Well, do you mind filling me in? 'Cause whatever boat you two're on, I completely missed it."

Flower yelped as a Spiny began to rush towards them. The few Eggs that the Lakitu had thrown in the seconds before Matt downed it had also hatched into additional Spinies, all of which were marching straight for him and the others.

"Actually, save that for later," Matt added hastily. "Let's go before we get mobbed by these Spinies!"

"Hey! HEY!" yelled the porcupine as the group of four took off. "Don't you dare just leave me like this! I swear, when I see you next, why I'll..."

He struggled to free himself as the Spinies shuffled past him, paying him no mind.

* * *

Faline watched the glowing square, circle, and triangle outlines fade in and out all around her as she and Ronno hovered inside the faint sphere of yellow floating in the corner of the airship's interior space. It was bad enough being stuck with someone she held in only slightly higher regard than a pile of dung, but she had been completely taken away from safety by a race of creatures she had never, ever seen before. And when you added some kind of supernatural force that kept you hanging helplessly in midair on top of all that, the end result was fear.

But not just any fear. No, this was a special kind of fear. The kind she previously thought to be exclusively in the realm of one thing and one thing only: Man's presence in her forest.

She longed desperately for the feeling of solid ground under her hooves. It would mean a way to escape. She had never realized just how much a deer like herself relied on running from danger to survive, or how defenseless she would feel in a situation that deprived her of any means to do that.

Her captors stood on the other side of the room, watching a large screen set up on the wall. It was displaying a bird's-eye view of the forest, and dozens upon dozens of dots were blinking over top of it. A single larger, unblinking dot marked the exact center of both the screen and a grid of lines on it which overlaid the map, staying put as the map and other dots all moved underneath it.

"We got airships and ground troops looking all over the woods!" said Iggy. "How long should we expect to wait before we hit pay dirt?"

"Well, before the South Meadow searches dried up, we usually made a find in about five to seven minutes after starting a conventional aerial ground airship scan," said Wendy. "But if it turns out we have to start scanning the ground at deeper levels, then all bets are pretty much off. That's why I ordered a complete normal scan of the Moonview Forest first, just so that we know for sure that we've milked that cow dry before we start spending time and energy doing painstaking really deep scans with our airships."

Iggy nodded. "Yeah, deep-scanning an area would take two Qs as long and use at least three and a half-seven times as much power as regular-scanning."

Wendy glanced sideways at her brother. "I'll pretend I know what you're talking about. But in the meantime, you should take those crates of Bullet Bills down below so the cannons don't run out of ammo."

"Oh, yes, let's do that." Iggy started hopping excitedly away from the screen towards a long wooden platform suspended halfway up from the ceiling by two thick metal rods embedded on opposite ends. A few large crates sat haphazardly arranged on it, which Iggy immediately began inspecting after reaching them.

"Sheesh," Ronno murmured. "Whaddaya think those creeps are up to there?"

Faline stared at the other fawn. "Why would you ask _me?_ " she said. "I don't know any more than you do!"

"Hey, you know more about the forest than anyone I've ever met," said Ronno with one of his undeservedly confident smiles. "I thought if anyone knew anything at all about this, you'd be the one."

Faline's eyebrows furrowed. "...Why don't you save the flattery for later, when we're not in danger?"

_"Whatchoo two talkin' about?"_

The pair of young deer yelped and jumped, with Ronno doing a full backflip in his panic, causing the yellow bubble to ripple and drift further into the corner of the room. Iggy was standing right at the edge of the spherical prison, looking up at them with a wide smile that was anything but affable.

Ronno tried to put himself between Iggy and Faline as he recovered. "What's going on here?" he snarled, trying not to sound frightened. "Why did you have to fawn-nap us while attacking our home? What do we have to do with...whatever it is you're doing?"

"Oh, kidnapping you doesn't have anything to do with why we're here," Iggy giggled. "I did that just for fun!"

"So let us go!" said Faline.

"No way! A pair of Moonview Forest whitetail fawns like you are way too rare and way too adorable to just release back into the wild."

_"Iggy!"_ Wendy yelled from her position in front of the map screen, making him turn his head. "Would you get your shell moving already!?"

Iggy hustled away from Faline and Ronno back towards the suspended crate platform.

"You can't keep getting distracted like that," the female Koopaling admonished with an irritated frown. "They're still gonna be back there after we finish this up. Now take those Bullet Bills down and stop fawning over the fawns!"

"But they're so cute!" said Iggy. "I think I'm gonna take 'em back home with us after we're done and make 'em my pets!"

Faline's ears dropped like a stone and she felt her body freeze up as Ronno gave her a sideways glance, gritting his teeth.

Wendy looked at her brother and replied with a very firm, "No, you're not."

"...Whaddaya mean, 'No, I'm not'?"

"I've seen the way you treat your Chain Chomp," said Wendy. "An organic creature wouldn't live to see Christmas under your care."

She looked over at the captive fawns, crossed her arms, and grinned. "If those two fawns are going to be anyone's pets, they're gonna be mine."

"Hey!" Iggy scowled, abandoning the crates and running back up to Wendy. "I don't recall you wasting a bunch of time throwing magic spells at every animal in sight until you finally netted one! And Moonview Forest whitetails are both hard to find _and_ hard to catch at the same time; I got a super-duper lucky break managing to nab two of them back-to-back!"

"Oh, please, there was nothing lucky about that second fawn," Wendy scoffed. "He literally ran up and jumped into your force field. It's like he _wanted_ to be captured."

"Well, I'm still not giving up either of them!" said Iggy with a pout. "You want a Moonview Forest deer, go hunt down your own. These two are mine!"

"Absolutely not!" Wendy retorted. "I would take better care of them than you ever could!"

"No, you wouldn't!"

"Yes, I would!"

The two Koopalings butted heads, growling and fuming as they continued to go back and forth on who would be the better caretaker.

Faline's heart raced as the scenario she had heard played out in her head. Taken away from the forest, her family and friends, and having to live under these horrifyingly violent beasts in some faraway place. A place that she didn't even know the conditions of; how hospitable it would be, what other dangerous things it might harbor, how hard it could be to escape and get back to the forest, _if_ there were any ways of escape to begin with...

"Hey, Faline!"

Ronno's voice jolted Faline out of her thoughts.

"I think I thought of a way we can get free from this bubble," he said excitedly.

"Really? What are you thinking?"

"Well, see how we're closer to the wall behind you?"

Faline turned her head and realized they were actually within reach of the side of the room.

"What if we push off the wall and try to swim through the air to that hanging platform that crazy turtle was just at?" said Ronno.

Faline cocked an eyebrow. "What good would that do?"

"I noticed that this bubble stretches and shrinks to keep us together inside it," said Ronno. "If we can reach that platform, we can get footing on it and maybe we can stretch this bubble enough that it bursts!"

Faline thought Ronno's plan over for a few seconds. "...Worth a try," she finally said.

Ronno grinned. "Heh heh, let's see Bambi come up with a plan like that," he chuckled.

Faline glared silently back at him.

"...All right, all right," said the young buck. "Let's just get over there."

The two fawns started trying to turn their bodies around so that they were both facing away from the nearby wall. It took several minutes and a lot of clumsy flailing, but finally, Faline and Ronno were both aimed for the hanging platform with their hind legs hovering a few inches from the wall behind them.

"Ready?" said Ronno. "One...two...three!"

They kicked their legs out and pushed off the wall as hard as they could. The bubble instantly went sailing across the room at a decent pace. They glanced at the two Koopalings, who were too absorbed in their squabble to notice them as they floated by.

The platform passed straight into the core of the magic field with no resistance as it reached it. The two fawns went straight to trying to get their hooves on solid ground, but their success was limited since they were still floating in midair much like how they would float in water. Still, bad footing was much better than no footing, and it felt orders of magnitude better as well.

"So how do we get far enough from each other to stretch this floating bubble?" Faline asked.

Ronno eyed the metal support pole on their side of the platform. "You hang out behind...this so it'll keep you over here, and I'll try and reach...the other one."

He set his sights on the other pole holding the platform up.

Faline followed Ronno's instructions and positioned herself on the outer side of the pole. Ronno tried to keep himself from floating off the platform as he started walking towards the nearest crate. He didn't have to go far before Faline began to feel the pull of the magic field resisting expansion. She moved closer to the pole until she felt the cold metal on the side of her body. Hopefully, that would keep her from slipping around it and floating towards Ronno.

Ronno's hooves slid over the platform like it was iced over, struggling against the growing tension of the stretching force field. He tried to keep himself anchored on it however he could, but he felt so weightless inside the bubble that wedging the tips of his hooves in the gaps between the wood planks comprising the platform was about all he could get. Finally, he reached the first crate and clawed his way to the other side.

"This is so weird," he said to himself. "I feel like I'm twice my own weight, and I feel it _sideways_ instead of down."

He latched onto the next crate with his mouth, and clambered his way sideways across the wooden box. It was a lot easier to grip the side of the crate like this than trying to stay on the ground, but the bubble's resistance kept increasing the farther he stretched it. It almost felt like he was trying to push something ahead of him up a river, against the current.

Faline felt her side of the force field press her against the pole harder and harder. Her concern about slipping off was waning, but at the same time, how much more pressure would her body be able to take before she could no longer breathe?

"Almost..." Ronno strained, trying to push off the crate he had just sideways-scaled to reach his goal on the other edge of the platform. "Just...a...little further..."

_PING!_

The pressure Faline and Ronno were feeling vanished along with the yellow glow surrounding them, dissipating into hundreds of small fireballs radiating triangle, circle, and square outlines that hit the floor and quickly fizzled out.

They were free.

" _YEAH!_ " Ronno tried to muffle the volume of his cheer. "Now watch as I lay waste to those two crazy turtles and whisk you back to safety all by myself!"

_He's trying _way_ too hard to impress me,_ Faline thought.

Ronno jumped down onto the floor, scraped it a couple of times, and then bounded off across the room, charging straight at Iggy and Wendy, who were still too caught up in their argument to notice him.

"Huh?" Iggy looked up just before the small fawn reached them and jumped away, letting Ronno hit Wendy in the side. The Koopaling was thrown onto the back of her shell and went rolling a couple of times across the floor.

"Ha!" Ronno barked. "You can't keep me down!"

He scraped the ground again in preparation for another galloping head-butt as Wendy picked herself up. Ronno eyed his foe with confidence, but it didn't last long.

"Why, you...!" Wendy snarled before charging the adolescent fawn herself.

Ronno's eyes went wide with shock as the Koopaling pounced on him in a fit of rage. Instantly, the two disappeared into a cloud of smoke.

Iggy pointed at the cloud and started cackling like there was no tomorrow, but Faline took a step-and-a-half back in alarm as she watched and listened to the sounds of fighting coming from the cloud. Every so often, she would catch a glimpse of Wendy and Ronno unobscured by the dust, and it never looked pretty: a slap to the cheek, a flurry of savage scratches to the face, and getting his mouth and muzzle stretched were things she all managed to see Wendy subject Ronno to at some point or other, and who knew what else she might've been putting him through inside the dust cloud.

The messy mêlée drew out for about five seconds before the cloud subsided to reveal an annoyed-looking Wendy dusting her hands off. Ronno lay sprawled on his stomach behind her, his eyes in a daze and his fur in a huge, ruffled, tangled mess. Several tufts of it were scattered on the floor around him.

"Alright, you can have this bullheaded loser," Wendy said to her brother, "but that blue-eyed one is mine!"

"Not in a million and one years!" Iggy snarled.

_"AWOO-GAH!"_

An alarm sounded from the map. Iggy and Wendy dropped their argument and ran back to the screen as one of the dots blinked.

"Airship 107 in distress 2.86 klicks south-by-northwest of here!" Iggy shouted.

"What are you talking about, you big, lean lunatic? It's _north_ -by-northwest, idiot!" said Wendy.

Iggy was already punching buttons on a nearby console. "It's probably Matt. Let's tell all our other airships to start looking for him over there."

"Actually, I have a better idea," said Wendy. "Let's only send a few of us there; that way, if it turns out he has some kind of upper hand, we won't all go down right away."

"How're we gonna do that?"

Wendy beckoned for her brother to lower his head and then started whispering into Iggy's ear.

Ronno staggered back to his hooves, nearly falling back down as the airship changed direction and picked up speed.

"Thaaat was nothing," he said to Faline, slurring his words slightly. "Like I said before, I don't feel uh-any pain."

"Uh-huh," said Faline, looking her co-captive over as he wobbled on his legs.

* * *

"Let's go, move faster! We need every animal out of the way!"

Birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and more fled from the squadron of Goombas, Koopas, and Paratroopas advancing briskly through their home. Behind them, an airship slowly crept through the air, projecting a large cone of magenta light on the ground underneath it. Thin, bright pink rings descended down the cone from the ship to the ground at regular intervals. A Hammer Bro stood on deck at the forefront, barking orders down to the others on the forest floor.

The Hammer Bro swept his eyes back and forth over the woods, looking for any creatures his underlings might have missed. Every last one had to be chased away before the airship could come through; for whatever reason, living animals played absolute havoc with the scanning equipment housed in the airships. No matter if they were forest critters, Koopa Troop soldiers, humans, Toads, Piranha Plants, or any other form of sentient life, their presence in the scanning beam produced interference and false positives to such an extent that any actual results would be completely drowned out. So all the critters had to go, which was thankfully proving pretty simple seeing as none of them seemed inclined to fight back.

Then he heard the scream of defeat from one of his subordinates echo through the trees.

_Matt,_ he thought, eyes narrowing.

He leapt off the deck onto the ground, letting the airship continue its slow crawl through the canopies, and started heading towards the source of the scream, looking for the Defender. Wendy and Iggy had given him and everyone else they brought to the forest orders to neutralize Matt on sight.

Another anguished wail reached his ears, followed shortly by a Green Paratroopa soaring head-over-heels through the air some distance in front of him.

"There he is." The Koopa Troop lieutenant grasped a hammer and ran for a large group of shrubs off to the side, the source of the troublemaker that had felled the Paratroopa. He took a large leap straight through them, bursting through the opposite side to meet his soon-to-be opponent, but as soon as he cleared the brush, he stopped dead in his tracks.

A stag much larger than him, possibly even close to rivaling the size of King Bowser, stood directly in front of him, a beaten and defeated Red Paratroopa tangled in his equally large antlers. Several other Paratroopas, Koopas, and Goombas were scattered on the ground around him, every one unconscious.

The stag flicked his head to one side to shake the Paratroopa out of his antlers and then lowered his head to glare down at the Hammer Bro. "Leave this forest now!" he ordered.

"I'm guessing you're this Great Prince of the Moonview Forest that everyone's rumoring about?" said the armor-clad Koopa.

The Great Prince raised his head back up. "I will not stand for the way you and those with you are treating my subjects. Now leave these woods and never return. Unless you wish to meet the same fate as these other intruders."

"Sorry, bub," said the Hammer Bro, "but you're not scaring me in the slightest. Even if you defeat me, there's no way you'd be able to singlehandedly take on a force big enough to sweep your whole forest! My troops and I have a job to do, and we're staying right where we are until we're done."

The Great Prince's eyes narrowed further, and he scraped at the ground.

"Well, if that's the way you want it, fine!" The Hammer Bro immediately hurled the weapon in his hand at the stag.

He was close enough to The Great Prince to catch him off-guard without enough time to dodge. The hammer hit him right between the eyes and sent him stumbling back a couple of steps, wincing in pain. The Hammer Bro took that moment to leap back a few feet himself.

But The Great Prince recovered sooner than he thought, and started galloping back across the forest floor on a beeline for the Bro while he was still prepping another hammer. His hasty throw allowed The Great Prince to easily dodge it, and he scrambled to ready a couple more while trying not to get hit by the large deer.

He ducked down to let his foe sail right over him, and then started flinging hammers the way he was supposed to. Still, The Great Prince proved too fast, bounding off downed logs and dirt walls to both change direction quickly and stay ahead of the hammers.

" _Dang,_ dude, you can _move!_ " said the soldier as The Great Prince began to sprint back towards him, antlers lowered. He jumped straight up and let him pass underneath.

"But you'll need more than speed to defeat a Hammer Bro!"

He jumped again, throwing a hammer at the peak of his leap. His opponent braked and then jumped backwards to dodge it while he landed on the ground and wound up his arm to throw another.

_SHRRRRRrrrrr!_

The Hammer Bro froze as a Tanooki Tail went rigid as a stick in front of him, resting right near his throat like the blade of a sword.

"Drop it, hammerhead," growled a voice. "It's the one-man cavalry."

The Great Prince paused and followed the Hammer Bro's eyes to see Matt in what was by far the most ridiculous state he had ever seen him, or any other Man, for that matter, in. He was dressed in the fur of a massively oversized, wrongly colored raccoon, and had his back turned to his foe while giving him a full-fledged death glare over his shoulder and successfully using his tail being held at the large turtle's neck to keep him still. The Great Prince might have even laughed out loud at the sight if someone else's face was in place of Matt's and he wasn't making it look and sound like he would somehow kill his opponent with his tail if it stepped out of line. And having first-hoof knowledge and experience of some of the horrific things his kind was capable of, there was no doubt in The Great Prince's mind that Matt knew some bizarre way to do just that.

The Hammer Bro turned to face his new opponent. "You won't hurt me."

The Great Prince's eyes darted back and forth between the other two fighters. Didn't that "Hammer Bro" have any idea just who he was talking about? Matt was a Man; harming others was all his kind ever did!

Matt's response cut off his ponderings. "Yeah? And what makes you say that?"

"You're a Defender. There are rules for Defenders; even we know that."

"Yeah, that's what the princess keeps telling me," said Matt. "Unfortunately, I'm not a good Defender."

"No, you are not," the Hammer Bro agreed with a smug grin.

"No, not the way you're thinking," Matt replied. "But hey, at least I _know_ the rules of the Defenders, unlike you. And nowhere does the princess say we can't inflict harm; otherwise, Mario, Yoshi, and I wouldn't be stomping on your heads all the time."

He abruptly whirled around in the opposite direction, spinning in a full circle and striking his foe in the back of the head with his tail. The Hammer Bro instantly fell on his face, and there he stayed.

Matt looked his defeated adversary over and sighed. "Only a gazillion more to go," he said wearily, looking back up into the ship-infested sky. "This is gonna go nowhere until we can find Iggy and Wendy again."

The Great Prince marched up to him, catching his attention. "What is the meaning of this?" the stag demanded.

"What, isn't it obvious?" Matt snorted. "I just took out a Koopa Troop soldier bent on giving you the biggest headache of your life. You're welcome, by the way."

"I already have the biggest headache of my life!" The Great Prince growled. "The entire forest is under siege by these...turtles, and there is little else apart from pure panic running unchecked amongst the animals."

"No frickin' kidding, Great Prince; do I sound like I want the forest to be like this!?"

"I wouldn't believe you even if you didn't. This is just the kind of thing someone like you might arrange to fulfill your depraved desires to hurt and injure those around you."

Matt gawked. "Wait a second, you think they're with me!? Or—I'm with them!?"

"Wanton harm and destruction," said The Great Prince, scowling down at him. "It fits perfectly with what I know about your species! Now you listen to me: I do _not_ want your 'help', do you understand? I do _not_...want...your...help!"

"There's a difference between not wanting something and not needing something, Great Prince," Matt retorted. "Now you listen to _me_ now: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem; would you quit being part of the frickin' problem and start working _with_ me instead of _against_ me? I don't want to be in this mess any more than you do!"

The Great Prince let out a faint, agitated breath through his clenched teeth. Most of the time, he could intimidate Matt enough to drive him out of the forest, at least until he came back. But actually taking a stand and arguing back with him was not something he had ever seen from the Man before, and it felt all the more frustrating to The Great Prince since not only was he being forced to spend more time than usual trying to make Matt leave, but more than anything else, he needed that time to figure out what these invaders were up to and how to stop them.

"Oh no, the whole squad's out, and the captain, too!"

Matt and The Great Prince looked up to see a panicking Paratroopa flying in the air.

"I gotta get back to the airship and send out a distress call!" it fretted before taking off through the treetops.

"Oh no you don't!" Matt shouted, running off after it. "Get your flying tail back here right now!"

"Hey! Don't you dare run off on me!" The Great Prince reared up to start sprinting through the forest in his own pursuit, but he had not even begun before Matt took a running jump and went soaring up into the tree canopies himself. Perhaps it was some feature of the raccoon he was wearing?

The Paratroopa zigzagged left and right through the tree branches, with Matt following its path in the air and The Great Prince doing likewise on the ground. The stag kept bouncing his attention up and down between his immediate surroundings and his targets, trying to stay on the airborne duo's trail without tripping over a root, crashing into a tree trunk, or getting his antlers caught or tangled in the forest growth. It didn't take long before a headache began to set in.

Thankfully, the chase didn't drag out for too long as the trio came upon an airship floating amongst the trees, sailing lazily through the woods while casting a deep magenta cone of light down onto the ground underneath.

The Paratroopa headed straight up to the deck with Matt right on its heels, but The Great Prince skidded to a stop and stared up at the huge flying vessel. He growled in exasperation because the two intruders he had been chasing had just gone off someplace he knew he had no chance of following them to.

* * *

A small assortment of Goombas, winged and wingless, idled on the ship deck as the Paratroopa flew over them. Most of them turned to watch it, letting Matt go unnoticed until he stopped his Tanooki flying and fell feet-first onto the head of the nearest Paragoomba. A quick whip of the tail, and it was out for the count.

None of the other small mushroom creatures fared that much better. Matt hit another, regular Goomba with his tail while running for a second winged one, crippling its wings and then flattening it with a quick one–two stomp. By then, the rest of the Goombas and Paragoombas knew there was an enemy on board and were advancing towards him from all around him. Matt waited for them to close in before starting a super-fast spin, becoming an instant blur of brown that launched them right off the airship with his Tanooki Tail. He spiraled outward from his starting point like a tornado, and it wasn't until he had hit every undefeated Goomba and Paragoomba that he slowed down and stopped.

"Whoa-ho, too much spinning. Too much spinning," he said, voice slurring ever so slightly as he wobbled on one foot, holding his head. "Don't get...nauseous."

He shook his head to clear it and then looked around. He spotted and ran over to an opening in the airship's rear section. Inside was a small cabin where the frantic Paratroopa was at a screen and console.

"Gotta get the Koopalings, gotta get the Koopalings..." it murmured to itself over and over, pushing buttons like its life depended on it.

Matt hesitated and then stopped himself after hearing what his target was doing. He stood in the middle of the room and waited for the Paratroopa to turn away from the console and face him.

"I activated a distress call," it said. "Now Iggy and Wendy know exactly where you are!"

Matt smirked. _"Perfect."_

He jumped up and stomped the flying turtle twice to put it on the ground in its shell. He gave it a hard kick and sent it hurtling out back onto the open deck, flying right off the edge and into the surrounding trees.

He turned back to the console and screen and observed it for a few seconds. It had an aerial map of the Moonview Forest overlaid with a grid and a _lot_ of flashing dots, which Matt could only guess were all the other airships currently saturating the forest's airspace.

He pushed a few buttons on the control panel before turning and going back out on the deck. The lift propellers slowly began to wind down, and the airship gently descended and touched down on the ground of the Moonview Forest.

Matt jumped off the deck and floated back down to the ground. The Great Prince was still standing nearby, but the Defender quickly noticed that Chikorita, Flower, and Bambi had joined him in looking the powered-down ship over.

"Well, there's something none of _us_ managed to find," Chikorita remarked as Matt's feet hit soil. "Capture an airship, Matt?"

Matt paused to process what his Pokémon friend said, before looking at the airship himself. "...Mmm, I guess you could say that," he said. "There's no more crew on board. I followed a Paratroopa here and almost kept him from sending out a distress call."

"'Almost'?" said Flower.

"Once I realized he was calling for help, I waited until he was finished before taking him out," Matt explained.

"Wait a second, you _let_ him make that distress call!?" Chikorita stared incredulously up at her owner.

The Great Prince narrowed his eyes.

"He was calling the Koopalings," Matt continued. "Letting that call go out means we don't have to spend any more time looking for them and their captives; now they'll come to _us._ And we'll be ready and waiting for them."

"'We'?" said The Great Prince indignantly, stepping forward. "How many times do I have to tell you? There is no 'we' in play between you and us!"

"Dad, come on!" Bambi protested. "Why are you trying to drive off the ones that in all likelihood are our best chance at removing these dangerous creatures from the forest?"

"Silence, Bambi!" his father snapped.

"But they can help us!" the Young Prince pleaded. "They're _already_ helping us! I don't think anyone here has even a grain of sand's idea of just what we're up against, but Matt and Chikorita do. They've already helped to save two animals from harm, and they've been going through the forest with me to help stem the runaway destruction these monsters are spreading!"

The Great Prince turned to glare back at his son. "And have you forgotten exactly what they are? You _cannot_ trust Man! You can _never_ trust Man!"

The stag turned back to speak to Matt again, except that he wasn't there. Looking around for a couple of seconds, he spotted the Tanooki-clad human shimmying up the ship's anchor chain back to the deck.

"Hey, where are you going now?" Flower called out.

"I don't have time for pointless arguments!" Matt shouted down. "I need to ready this airship to strike back at Iggy and Wendy once they get here!"

* * *

Iggy's green hair waggled in the wind as he stood on the bowsprit pole mounted to the front tip of his airship, watching all the others hovering over the Moonview Forest. Some had their scanning cones running, others were still firing cannonballs down into the trees. Explosions of smoke burst upward out of the vast, green canopy, and dozens upon dozens of birds took to the sky and tried to fly away to safety, only to be met with an onslaught from a neighboring ship, leaving them to sail chaotically among them over the forest.

The Koopaling giggled at the terrified chirps echoing through the air. Any day he could instill fear in his opponents was a good day for him. It made overpowering them much easier, not to mention the warm and fuzzy feeling it gave him inside.

He pulled out a small metal walkie-talkie-looking device and held it to his mouth. "How close are we to the distress call location?" he asked.

_"Couple hundred yards,"_ replied the staticky voice of a minion. _"You should be seeing it any second."_

Iggy swept his eyes over the forest, looking for any sign one of the many other airships surrounding his own was in trouble. Most airships in the fleet could send out a distress call, but the ship he was currently riding was the only one they had brought to the forest that was capable of receiving one. Picking out which generic flying boat sent the call would be a challenge since none of the others would even be aware it was in trouble.

Or maybe it wouldn't be.

Iggy's eyes fell on one of their airships sitting on the forest floor. It was facing perpendicular to his airship while tilting away from it. It did not look damaged at all, not even a little bit. It couldn't have been shot down; it must have landed voluntarily.

"Maybe it ran out of power like so many other airships've been doing lately," he said to himself.

_BOOM!_

A cannon on the near side of the grounded ship fired a Bullet Bill straight at Iggy. The large metal projectile barely missed the Koopaling and zoomed on to strike the front mast behind him, exploding on impact.

The other cannons followed closely behind, all of them firing again and again to send a steady flurry of Bullet Bills at Iggy's airship. The vessel jolted back and forth as it started taking impacts all over its hull.

"The beached airship's attacking us!" Iggy shouted into his walkie-talkie. "Fire back, now!"

He tried to wave his wand and conjure up a fireball to counterattack, but one of the incoming Bullet Bills struck the base of the bowsprit, snapping it off and sending Iggy tumbling down to the forest below, losing hold of the wand in the process. The airship began to list and catch fire in various places as Bullet Bills continued to bomb its hull, masts, and propellers.

Iggy flipped in midair and landed on his feet. "Shoot back at them already!" he yelled at his device. "Johnson, why aren't you dumb clucks returning fire!?"

_"We got no ammo down here!"_ shouted the voice on the other end in panic. _"No cannonballs or Bullet Bills to shoot with!"_

Iggy stared up at the failing ship. "Whoo, boy..."

A Bullet Bill hit one of the airship's battered masts, splitting it in half. The lift propeller on it sputtered and then gave out, causing the ship to pitch sharply and fall into the trees below. The sounds of breaking branches and cracking trunks pierced through the din of several flocks of panicking birds flying up out of the canopy leaves as they swallowed the dropping airship. But when it was about halfway in, several much louder snaps started ringing out, and the trees themselves began to topple, pushed over as the much denser, heavier ship sunk further down into the woods.

Iggy jumped to the side as a broken tree hit the ground near him with a throaty thud. In fits and spurts, all the other large trees followed, landing in various places around the area until the airship had downed them all. The wooden boat struck the dirt and split apart into several large pieces, smoke and glowing embers still rising into the sky.

Iggy stared at the ruined airship. "...Okay, we need a new plan."

He rushed over to the landing site and disappeared into the smoldering wreckage.

The cannons on the attacking airship stopped their barrage. Matt leapt over the cockeyed ship and floated to the ground, eyeing the debris as the others came out from within the forest foliage.

"I saw Iggy on that airship," said the Defender. "Let's go see if Wendy, Faline, or Ronno are with him!"

Chikorita scampered after her Tanooki-suited owner as he ran for the destroyed boat. The Young Prince started to follow, but a firm, "Bambi, stop!" made him do just that.

He turned back to look at his father.

"I don't want you partaking in these kinds of perilous situations," The Great Prince said. "These outsiders, all of them, are very, very dangerous!"

"And they've got hold of a couple of our own subjects!" said Bambi. "I'm not about to just stand by and do nothing! You once said, 'A Prince may be afraid, but he can't let fear stop him from acting.' Why should a Prince let fear stop _others_ from acting? I'll be fine; I'm sure of it!"

Before The Great Prince could argue any further, his son turned tail and galloped after Matt and Chikorita towards the ruined airship.

* * *

Near his former flying vessel, Iggy frantically fumbled around within the foliage, searching for his dropped wand. He needed it right now; the Defender had caught him off-guard and would most certainly finish the job if he didn't pull himself together quickly.

"...Ah! There it is!" he exclaimed, seeing it laying in front of a small patch of flowers near one of the huge splits in the airship's hull. He rushed over to pick it back up, but at the last second, a vine shot in from between his legs and snatched it away.

He tried to grab it back, but only wound up doing a somersault in place as he dove for the swiftly retreating vine. Left on his back, he saw Matt leap above him and come down with a strong stomp right on the Koopaling's stomach.

Iggy heaved out a cough as Matt jumped off him. Retreating into his shell and righting it, he saw Chikorita standing several steps behind Matt, smiling confidently while holding his wand in one of her Vine Whips.

"Give up yet, Iggy?" Matt asked. "I suggest you do while you're still in relatively good condition."

Iggy's arms, legs, and head popped back out of his shell. "You haven't won this yet!" he said.

"We will soon enough," said Matt. "We beat you, we beat Wendy, and we find the two fawns you kidnapped; that's all we need to do, really."

"Quite a tall order for someone whose plans never go off right!" Iggy giggled.

"This one did." Matt gestured to the intact beached airship behind him. "Heck, you didn't even shoot back at us, which tells me you were the only one on board that airship. Without reinforcements, I can finish you off right here and now. You think I'm frickin' stupid, Iggy?"

A rustle came from inside the broken airship. Chikorita clenched her teeth in shock as four Hammer Bros, one right after the next, rushed out of the hull split behind the Koopaling.

"You were saying?" Iggy's grin stretched from ear to ear.

Two of the Hammer Bros. immediately threw their hammers Matt's way, while the other two leapt up onto the deck of the shipwreck.

Matt jumped to one side to evade a hammer, and then jumped back to dodge the other. "Chikorita, cover me while I go in!"

The small Grass-type whirled up her head leaf as Matt charged the pair of Hammer Bros. flanking Iggy on the ground. The duo on the deck began throwing some hammers of their own down at Matt, and Chikorita hurled Razor Leaves back at them to intercept and shoot them out of the air.

Matt swiped his Tanooki Tail to take out one of the Hammer Bros, but could not get to the second before it jumped up into the air, dodging a second tail swipe. He skidded to a stop and turned to see where the elite Koopa soldier would land.

_WHAM!_

Iggy's spinning spike shell whooshed in and hit the Defender right in the gut, throwing him back several feet and costing him his Tanooki Suit. He slid across the ground for several more feet before stopping and laying motionless where he was.

The giddy Koopaling laughed and danced at his successful strike, only for Bambi to come sprinting in and give him a head-butt to his own gut, ramming him into the nearby airship hull and embedding the spikes on his shell into the wood.

The Young Prince took a few steps back and saw Iggy stuck on the side of the shipwreck, limbs flailing.

"Head-butt him again, Bambi!" Chikorita urged. "As hard as you can, before he gets free!"

Bambi glanced back at her, before looking back at Iggy, still trying to wriggle loose. A black flying shape caught his attention out the corner of his eye, and he darted away as a hammer struck the ground he had been standing on.

The single Hammer Bro still active on the ground kept up the onslaught, throwing hammer after hammer at the fawn. Bambi bounded left and right across the forest floor as he fled from the heavy projectiles.

The Hammer Bros. positioned on the airship deck joined in after a couple of seconds, adding their own hammers to the mix. Chikorita stepped up her Razor Leaf counterattack, taking out as many hammers as she could, but she could not neutralize all of them, and several slipped through unchecked, leaving Bambi to elude them himself.

The Leaf Pokémon felt the vibration of hooves pounding the ground through her feet as she watched her friend desperately trying to stay a step ahead of his attackers. Each one got heavier and heavier as Bambi moved farther and farther away—

_Wait a second, that's not right!_

Chikorita looked behind her. She let out a surprised yelp and jumped sideways before The Great Prince could trample her on his full-speed gallop straight into the fray. The stag charged with antlers lowered directly at the Hammer Bro positioned on the ground, who barely had time to look and spot the new combatant before getting hit. The Great Prince kept going, slamming the soldier directly into the still-stuck Iggy and crashing both through the hull. The wood boards fractured and splintered as both Koopas squealed in pain.

Chikorita stared wordlessly at Bambi's father and the ease with which he had just overwhelmed two notoriously difficult Koopa Troop members. But it hadn't come for free; she quickly realized from his immobile struggling that The Great Prince's antlers had gotten entangled in the tattered hull. Cracked boards creaked as he tried to pull himself free.

Laying on the ground just inside the airship, Iggy shook his head to clear it before jumping back up. He looked at the stag. "Stuck?" he asked. "Here, I'll give you a boost!"

He jumped and gave The Great Prince a hard kick right in the snout. The large buck reared up out of the hull onto his hind legs and stumbled backwards several steps, wood splinters scattering around his hooves. Iggy jumped through the unblocked hole in the hull, withdrew into his shell, and shot underneath the stag's legs across the ground, zooming at breakneck speed, straight for Chikorita.

_Oh no..._ She tried to jump up to dodge him, but Iggy's shell reached Chikorita well ahead of when she expected and hit her hard. She let out a scream, flying backwards into a small tree trunk behind her. The wand she had been holding flew in another direction across the battlefield, and Iggy immediately sprinted after it.

* * *

On the opposite side of the battlefield, Matt was finally pulling himself together from the near-knockout blow Iggy had dealt him. He staggered onto one foot, and then the other, but he didn't truly snap out of his daze until a scream pierced the air around him. He saw Chikorita crash into a small nearby tree trunk, shaking the whole plant. Iggy sprinted away from them, chasing some kind of sparkling object soaring overhead.

"Chikorita! You all right?" Matt exclaimed, seeing his Pokémon fall to the ground, a few leaves shaken loose from the tree fluttering down after her.

He took a moment to look the scene over. The Hammer Bros. standing on the airship deck had not moved, but the one on the ground was missing. He did a double take upon realizing that The Great Prince and his son were now in the thick of things. The former was standing in the middle of the field, head lowered as if stunned, while the latter was running for his life as hammers rained down on him from the duo of Hammer Bros.

_Wait, when did those two join this fight?_ he wondered. _...Eh, doesn't matter; if they're helping, I couldn't care less._

He glanced back at Chikorita just to make sure she didn't look too severely injured. She wasn't, but soon after confirming it, a spot of brown amongst the leaves surrounding her caught his eye.

_Another Super Leaf! I'd be able to finish all—_

His thought was cut short when he saw Iggy running back towards them, wand in hand. He charged it up and aimed for the still-stationary Great Prince.

"Great Prince, heads up on your left!" Matt shouted, running towards him.

Bambi's father looked over at Iggy just as he sent a green fireball his way. The large deer vaulted forward to dodge it and galloped in a circle to come back around to his assailant, antlers at the ready.

Matt had no time to adjust his trajectory before he realized they were going to collide. The Great Prince hit him with the kind of power he imagined a racing kart might pack. He would have undoubtedly left the ground and gone flying had he been struck head-on, but since it had been a glancing blow, he simply went stumbling several feet sideways, trying not to fall.

The Hammer Bros' weapon siege chased Bambi back towards the others. He didn't even notice his human friend until Matt plowed into him, going over the fawn in an involuntary cartwheel that ended with his face in the dirt. Bambi felt his balance shift and tried not to trip over his own hooves and fall. He passed very near Chikorita, still lying by the tree, charging over a small scattering of leaves sitting next to her.

_POOF!_

There was a flash of smoke that startled the Young Prince enough for him to put on the brakes. His whole body suddenly felt different. Like his fur was suddenly three times thicker and his tail was three times heavier.

He looked himself over for a moment and nearly freaked out upon seeing that his thoughts were not unfounded; his fur was brown and his tail was now that of a raccoon, just like what he had seen with the squirrel and with Matt.

Chikorita beamed. "You just got a Tanooki Suit!" she said.

"Wait, really?"

The Leaf Pokémon nodded enthusiastically. "Get back in the battle; your dad and Matt could use you right now!"

Bambi looked back at the airship. Iggy was chasing his father in a figure-8 along the ground in front of it, shooting fireballs every few seconds while dodging The Great Prince's own attempts to ram him with his antlers, with the Hammer Bros. standing on the deck still throwing their weapons down onto them. The sheer number of hammers that now littered the ground of the forest was reaching a point where almost half of the grass was covered by them.

Bambi started galloping towards the chaotic fight. His hooves pounded the soil harder and harder as he picked up speed. He took a leap and went soaring through the air far beyond anything he had ever managed before, going straight for the deck.

One of his opponents jumped to avoid being hit by the Tanooki-clad fawn as he touched down on top of the wreck. His comrade's reflexes were not as quick, allowing Bambi to rush in, whirl around on his hooves, and give the soldier a hard kick in the stomach with his hind legs, sending him hurtling off the deck with a scream.

The Young Prince watched the other Hammer Bro fall back down. His ears folded back and he glared at his opponent, who was scowling back at him, hammer in hand.

The Hammer Bro made the first move, lobbing his hammer at Bambi. Bambi dashed in and gave the elite Koopa a good whip with his Tanooki Tail in his moment of vulnerability. The Hammer Bro went down in a single hit.

_Goodness,_ Bambi thought. _These creatures fall easily. They might even go down easier than _we_ do!_

He looked back down at his father on the forest floor just in time to see Iggy vault upward and do a midair flip over the irate stag. At the same time, Matt, now back up from his faceplant after tripping over the Young Prince, came sprinting towards them again.

But he screeched to a stop when Iggy landed on The Great Prince's back. The large buck reeled his head back and tried to catch and throw off his unwanted rider with his antlers, but Iggy was sitting too far back for him to reach.

"Yee-haw!" the Koopaling exclaimed, twirling his energy-teeming wand like a lasso as The Great Prince continued to thrash about. Matt stood mere feet away, trying to decide how to help.

Iggy grinned at the idle Defender after a few seconds. "Whatsamatter?" he taunted.

Matt glared back at him, but his expression quickly changed when Iggy suddenly leapt off his cervine steed and sent out a wave of green fire. He whirled around and ran away from the propagating attack, going for one of the fallen tree trunks and jumping over it. He ducked down behind the downed trunk as the magic combustions struck it and poofed out of existence.

Iggy ran towards the tree Matt was hiding behind. "That ain't gonna protect you from these!" he proclaimed, waving his wand again and throwing a single fireball at the trunk. On impact, the fireball exploded with such force that the part of the trunk it impacted was instantly blasted to bits and splinters which showered the ground behind it.

Matt tried to catch his breath from having barely missed being turned into a wooden shrapnel catcher, hiding behind a section of tree that was still intact. But a second later, he heard Iggy conjure up and then hurl another ball of flame his way.

He crawled forward as rapidly as he could as another large part of the tree trunk was blown out. Iggy's maniacal cackling easily drowned out the whooshes and whirs of his wand as he continued sending firebomb after firebomb at Matt's hiding place, taking out the fallen tree one chunk at a time while Matt kept rushing forward on his hands and knees to avoid getting showered by wood splinters. It wasn't long before he reached where the tree had snapped off from its roots.

_Think, for Arceus' sake, THINK!_ Matt's brain raced to come up with a counterattack.

He dragged his hand across the ground and suddenly felt a wooden handle. He looked down to see a Hammer Bro's hammer lying next to him.

Iggy's voice rang out loud and clear from the other side of his wooden barrier as Matt continued eyeing the hammer: "You are Chomp kibble now! No more _treeeeeeee!_ Where you goin', _PAAAAAL?_ "

Matt paused as he processed what his foe was saying.

_Is this nutcase for real?_ he thought. _If he is, he should know better than to quote the movie 'cause he'd know exactly what's coming in the next few seconds._

"Next time you have a chance to beat someone, don't hesitate!" Iggy charged his wand with energy, ran for the tree trunk, and struck the last section with it at point-blank range.

_WHAM!_

The last chunk of the trunk exploded into splinters that blew over the forest behind it.

There was no one behind it.

"Where'd he go?" Iggy looked around.

Matt dashed in from off to one side and hurled a hammer at the Koopaling.

The weapon struck Iggy in the head, the Koopaling screaming in agony as he went down. Matt paid no mind as he sprinted for Iggy, jumped up, and came down with all his might onto his opponent. Iggy's body convulsed violently from the impact and then went limp.

"Appreciate the advice," Matt said to the unconscious body under his feet. "Next time, don't give it to your enemy."

He stepped off Iggy's body and looked up. Bambi, his father, and Chikorita were all looking at him from their various positions among the trees. Matt's own attention was on The Great Prince.

"Still think they're in with me?" he asked, his voice as flat as his expression.

"As a matter of fact, I do!" The Great Prince huffed.

Matt stood wordless for a second before putting a hand to his head. "Oy..."

"We should check inside the airship," said Chikorita, dragging herself over to her owner, still cringing in pain. "Faline and Ronno could be in there."

"Now hang on a second," said Matt. "Are you gonna be okay?"

"Oh, I'll be fine," said the small Grass-type, smiling through her discomfort. "So long as we won't be engaging in another huge fight like this right away."

"Let's hope not," said Matt, turning to look at the smoldering ship. "C'mon, let's see if anyone's in the airship."

"And make sure they're not hurt," Bambi added, already standing next to the shipwrecked boat as Matt and Chikorita walked over to join him.

"And that." Matt nodded before venturing into the large split in the hull. Chikorita went in next, and Bambi brought up the rear. The Great Prince stayed outside, looking the wreck over with a scowl.

The smell of smoke hung heavily in the interior of the destroyed vessel. Blackened ash coated the floor, and dozens of half-burned wood planks had fallen out of the walls and now leaned on each other all across the room, strewn obstructively through the ship like jungle vines with several still glowing orange in some spots. A few rays of sun peeked through cracks in the hull.

Matt ducked under one of the cannons set in the side of the hull and carefully weaved his way through the debris, taking care not to upset any of it for fear the entire ship might cave in on him and the two animals with him. He kept wincing and recoiling as warm ashes floated and danced around his face.

"Hey!" he called out into the smoke, coughing a couple of times. "Anyone in here?"

"Faline?" Bambi tried not to choke on the airborne detritus himself as he cried out for his friend. "...Faline?"

He felt his eyes start to water as he followed Matt further into the charred interior.

"Try to keep your head down," said Chikorita, stifling a cough of her own as she walked beside him, head leaf over her face. "Smoke rises, so the air's a little better close to the ground."

The Young Prince hung his head below his shoulders, as low as he could without stooping. Sure enough, he noticed an improvement in the air quality. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make it tolerable.

Matt approached a large pile of rubble underneath an equally large hole in the ceiling above. Gingerly, he stepped onto it, testing its stability. When it didn't shift, he kept going to the top of the pile, putting him high enough to step up into the room above.

He looked around. On the wall next to him was a large monitor displaying a bird's-eye view of the Moonview Forest just like the one in the other airship he had tangled with. There was a large crack across the screen and several substantial scrambled pixel artifacts over the image, but the monitor itself was still functional; the dots on the displayed map marking the surrounding airships were blinking and updating their locations without any obvious trouble.

Likewise, the grey console under the screen, though considerably damaged, was still operational. Intact buttons flashed and the soft whir of the internal equipment still hummed through the room. Matt could even hear a ringing sound effect not unlike what a videophone sounded when it was getting a call: _" RING, RING, RINGETY RING, RING, RINGETY RING-RING-RING."_

Bambi and Chikorita climbed up into the room from the pile of debris in the room below, joining the Defender in looking around. Bambi's ears suddenly perked.

"I hear coughing!" he exclaimed.

"Oh?" Matt started scanning his surroundings much more closely.

"Hello?" called Chikorita. "Someone here?"

"Hey," a male voice choked out. "Over here, help me!"

"Sounds like Ronno," said Matt, walking in the direction of the voice. "Yo, where are you?"

He spotted two metal rods hanging from the ceiling on the opposite side of the room. A large wooden platform dangled lopsided from one of them, the other end resting on the floor. Ronno lay partly inside a hole in the platform from where its other metal anchor had been ripped out, pinned there by a large crate of inactive Bullet Bills sitting partially on his back. A few more crates lay sideways on the floor nearby, their contents spilling out around them.

"Well, that's one hostage found and rescued," said Matt, going over to Ronno. "Any clue where the other might be?"

"She's not here anymore," said Ronno as Matt strained to push the crate immobilizing him back up the incline. "Those huge, hideous turtles split us up. One stayed here and kept me, and the other took Faline with her."

Chikorita jumped up behind the crate and wrapped it in her Vine Whips to help Matt out. The huge wooden box inched its way up, and Ronno frantically wriggled out from where he had been trapped.

"You out of the way?" Matt grunted. "Okay, Chikorita, let it go."

He suddenly jumped sideways while the small Pokémon released her Vine Whip grip on the box. The heavy crate slid down to the floor, its weight causing the damaged wood planks beneath it to crack and cave in.

Bambi came walking over to them. "So how are we gonna find Faline and the other Koopaling?" he asked, Tanooki tail twitching in unrest.

"Good question," Matt replied. "I'm thinking about that right now—"

He was interrupted by a sudden fit of laughter from Ronno.

Matt and Chikorita looked questioningly at the fawn, who was directing his guffawing at Bambi.

"What's so funny?" the Young Prince asked, sounding a little irritated.

"You look so stupid!" Ronno replied between laughs and attempts to catch his breath. "What happened, did you decide you needed to be an even bigger laughingstock than you already are? Ha ha ha ha...!"

Bambi's ears began to droop as Ronno continued to laugh at him. But his laughter didn't last for long. A hand snatched him up by the scruff and hoisted him off his hooves. He found himself face-to-face with a glowering Matt.

"Really?" he said. "That's how you treat one of the guys rescuing your sorry hide?"

_"RING, RING, RINGETY RING, RING, RINGETY RING-RING-RING."_ The looping tone playing from the console abruptly increased in volume, making everyone turn their heads.

Chikorita saw something flashing on the screen, mostly obscured by the non-functional pixels. "I think we're actually getting a call, guys."

Matt looked back at Ronno for a few seconds, and then simply let go of his neck, letting him fall unceremoniously to the ground with a thump and "Ow!" while he walked back to the screen and console, Bambi and Chikorita following behind him.

He pushed an undamaged button. The ringing sound ceased, and a flawed, flickering image of Wendy appeared on the screen.

_"What's your problem, Iggy?"_ the Koopaling hissed. _"You know darn well we don't let airship calls ring, so why have—"_

"Oh, I'm very sorry, Wendy," said Matt mockingly. "I don't think we got that message."

Wendy blinked in surprise before actually taking a look at who was on the other end of the channel. She leered at the imperfect, jerky image on her screen.

_"...You."_

"Yes, me."

_"What an unpleasant surprise,"_ Wendy snorted.

"I aim to un-please," said Matt. "But it's only fair that you get your day ruined after ruining an entire forest's worth of animals' days. Alas, your brother Iggy didn't see it that way, so he won't be joining us for the rest of this little invasion of yours."

Wendy crossed her arms and frowned. _"...All right, what do you want?"_ she huffed.

"How about that fawn you're still holding captive?" Matt crossed his own arms. "And while you're at it, tell your troops to pull out of the Moonview Forest and go back to Dark Land!"

Wendy balked. _"Not on your life!"_ she said, sounding like Matt had just asked her to take a lava bath. _"We're here on a mission, and we're not going anywhere until we fulfill it."_

"Fighting words from someone whose troops only stay together as long as they deal with people who don't actually fight back," said Matt. "Seriously, the only reason you're able to cause so much trouble here is because inhabitants like the Toads or Moonview Forest critters provide almost no real resistance. The second Mario, Yoshi, myself, or...really, anyone who fights gets involved, your plans go down in flames just like this airship I destroyed. Really, you'd be much better off quitting while you're ahead, before I start tearing through your fleet looking for you."

_"Do you really think you have a chance at actually pulling that off, Mr. Hotshot?"_

Matt smirked. "Yippee-ki-yay, Wendy Koopa."

He hit a button on the console, and the damaged screen went blank.

"Whatee-ki-wha?" said Bambi. "What was that about?"

"Oh, that's just something often said by the guy _Die Hard_ situations are most commonly associated with. And since that links it to this kind of a disaster so closely, anyone who winds up in their own _Die Hard_ situation is practically obligated to say it for themselves at some point or other."

"Really?" Bambi's voice was flat. "That's what you say in the midst of something like this?"

"Actually, no," Matt confessed. "The original saying is much more obscene, and I don't like to curse."


	10. 1-10: Needle in a Stack of Needles

Lopsided floors were never among Chikorita's favorite things to stand on. It always made her feel like one misstep would cause her to slip and go rolling all the way to the low end of the room.

Bambi stood next to her inside the cabin of the airship Matt had captured and beached, both of them eyeing the wall-mounted screen and grey console underneath and off to the side of it. Two panels on the latter were open, letting the Leaf Pokémon see the multitude of differently-colored wires and uniquely-shaped green circuit boards inside.

"So how is this...'computer system' going to help us find Faline?" the Young Prince asked.

"I'm not sure," Chikorita said. "Maybe Matt'll be willing to explain it to us once he gets whatever he needs out of the other airship."

Bambi stepped closer to the grey metal box and peered in through one of the openings. Small lights on the circuitry were blinking just like the buttons on the console exterior.

Chikorita watched as he slowly stuck his head through the opening and into the console itself. She walked up to the other open panel and saw him sniffing at the air inside.

"Kinda dusty," Bambi commented after a couple of seconds.

Footsteps sounded from by the cabin entrance. Chikorita turned around to see Matt standing in the open doorway, soot smudged on his skin and clothes in sparse amounts. He was looking at something with several severed electrical wires coming out of it like Yanma legs that he had in his hand, but when he looked up at Bambi and Chikorita, he did a double take and rushed over to them.

"Okay, I-I know I never met your mom," he said hastily to the fawn as he looked back out at him from within the metal box, "but I can hear her in my head right now, and she's saying, 'Please don't do that.' Can you just...take your head out of there, please?"

Chikorita looked back at Bambi, who was staring uncertainly up at Matt through the second panel opening. The hurried, maybe even _nervous_ insistence that he remove his head from the open computer and the faintly tense look on his face betrayed a hint of real, genuine anxiety under his otherwise apathetic demeanor. The human and deer held gazes for several seconds, but Matt's face was unwavering, and eventually, Bambi slowly withdrew his head from the interior of the console and stepped backwards.

"Thank you," said the Defender. "Now I can go in."

Bambi choked back a yelp of surprise as Matt plunged his own head straight through the open panel he had just come out of and into the mess of wires inside with absolutely no reservation whatsoever. Either he was crazy, or he knew exactly what he was doing; it was rare for anybody, even Chikorita herself, to know without doubt which was the case with him in any given situation.

She looked at the wad of wires he had clenched in his fist as he put it through the other opening. All of them were connected to the sides of a black plastic box.

Matt was disconnecting several wire contacts from the circuitry. He took a couple of the box's contacts and went in deep to insert them in two of a circuit board's newly open jacks.

_BZZZZT!!!_

A flash of blue electricity covered his body with a crackle loud and sudden enough to make both Bambi and Chikorita jump back. The Leaf Pokémon felt her feet slip as she hit the floor again, fell on her side, and went rolling head-over-heels down the slanted deck, unable to stop until she hit the wall of the room.

"Ow!" she whimpered, her body residually aching from the damage she had taken after getting thrown headlong into one of the forest trees several minutes ago.

She looked back up towards the computer console. Matt was tingling and had little blue sparks flashing and jumping all over his body, along with several more soot smudges on his clothes and skin. Bambi stared worriedly at him through the other open panel.

"This is why I didn't want you in here, Bambi," the Defender's voice came from inside the metal case.

"What exactly are you doing?" Chikorita asked, walking back to them.

"This box I took from the other airship's computer is able to pick up signals from advanced locator beacons installed in all of the Koopa Troop's airships," said Matt as he continued fiddling with the wires. "You get location, a unique identifier, any issues that might require maintenance...basically everything you'd need for managing a fleet. But only a choice few airships have this beacon info receiver installed, which, naturally, are always the ones the Koopalings or other higher-ups use, like the one we shot down."

"I'm surprised at how much you know about Bowser's electronics," said Chikorita.

"I've always enjoyed tinkering with computers," Matt replied, plugging in another wire. "Been doing it at least since I was a teenager."

"So, will you be able to figure out where Wendy took Faline once you finish that?" Bambi asked.

"Unfortunately, no," said Matt. "This will merely let us tell the airships apart from each other."

"So then how exactly is this gonna help us find out where Wendy went?" Chikorita asked.

"It's not. We're gonna have to do that ourselves. Splicing the beacon receiver into this computer is just so that we won't have to guess where her airship is within the greater fleet once we identify it."

"Any ideas how we do that?" Chikorita said.

"Sadly, no." Matt took a few more wires from the receiver and hooked them up to the hardware. "Right now, I think the best we can hope for is linking a ship to any of the communications the invading ground units are getting, and that means we need to go back out into the forest and start looking for Koopa Troop again."

"What about when Wendy contacted us in the other ship?" Bambi asked.

"Yeah, couldn't you do something with that one?" said Chikorita.

Matt shook his head. "Mmm-mm; too damaged. Trying to trace from that system would be far too unreliable, if it even produced anything resembling a result at all without frying itself completely."

"All right," said Chikorita, turning and taking a step towards the cabin exit. "So what exactly are we looking for?"

"Honestly, right now, I have no clue what we should be looking for," Matt said, splicing in the last couple of wires. "I'm hoping that going back to clearing out intruders will give me some idea of exactly what we need. As much as I'd rather not delay rescuing your abducted friend, Bambi, I don't think we have a choice."

"I'm okay with that...for now, at least," said Bambi tentatively. "Besides, I'm also really worried about Thumper."

"Right, he's still unaccounted for," said Chikorita, looking down at the ground in front of her. "We really should find him and make sure he's okay."

Matt took his head out of the console and closed the panels. He pressed a button, and the monitor flashed to life. The aerial view of the Moonview Forest appeared along with all the dots representing the surrounding airships.

"All right, this ship's ready to ship out once we know where to ship out to," Matt declared. "Let's go back outside."

Chikorita followed her owner and the Young Prince down the sloped floorboards and out onto the deck of the ship. Matt scooped her up in his arms before leaping off the deck and landing on the ground next to the hull, where The Great Prince and Flower had been hanging out. He put the Leaf Pokémon back on the ground as Bambi came down after them, floating gently using the tail of the Tanooki Suit he still had on.

The large stag looked his son over before turning to Matt. "What's happened to Bambi?" he demanded.

"Relax; it's just a power-up," said Matt. "Next time he takes a decent hit, that'll just Poof! like it was never there to begin with."

"So, uh..." Flower began. "Are we close to being safe again?"

"Closer," said Chikorita with a smile. "But we need to go seek out more Koopa Troop."

"And why in Gaia's name would we do that?" growled The Great Prince.

"You want them out of here, don't you?" Matt replied. "The quickest way to do that is to find and strike at the head of the unit. By seeking out groups of Koopa Troop that are still active in the forest, we should be able to determine where their leader is and then go directly there."

"How exactly?" said the stag.

Matt scrunched his lips and inhaled through his nose for a few seconds. "...I have no idea; that's sorta why I'm doing this plan in the first place."

Chikorita winced slightly. Moments like this were a cringeworthy reminder of why her owner liked to keep her with him. Matt's face told her he wasn't exactly unaware of it himself.

The sound of frantic wing-flapping broke the tense silence as a brown owl with distinctive yellow eyes came rushing through the tree trunks. He perched on a nearby branch above everyone's heads, panting as though he had just flown a marathon.

"Friend Owl?" The Great Prince looked up at the nocturnal bird.

"Hello...there...sir," replied the owl between gasps.

"You're a long way from home," said Bambi, looking concernedly up at him.

"Yes...well..." Friend Owl stopped trying to catch his breath and cleared his throat. He started to speak again, but did a double take upon seeing the Tanooki-suited fawn. "Oh...my word, Young Prince! ...What's happened to you?"

"I-uh...It's a long story."

Friend Owl looked Bambi over for a few seconds before his eyes slid over to glare at Matt. He leaned towards The Great Prince. "What's he doing here?" he murmured warily.

Matt groaned to himself and rolled his eyes.

"I suspect he has something to do with all of this chaos," The Great Prince replied.

"Look, would you two forget about me already!?" Matt huffed. He turned to the owl. "What's got you so exhausted?"

The owl put his wings on his hips and grimaced down at the Defender.

"...Please?" Chikorita appended to the end of her owner's question.

Friend Owl shifted his frown to Chikorita for a second, before finally speaking.

"Well...I had the rudest awakening I've had in quite a long time. This...winged _turtle_ woke me up and chased me out of my knothole, and the next thing I knew, a huge number of these turtles and-and gigantic mushrooms with eyes were flying all around me and chasing me."

"Any idea why?" Flower asked.

"No; they just seemed to be chasing everybody away. I heard talk of having just got orders to 'deep-scan' that part of the forest; whatever that might mean."

"Nothing good, I'll bet," The Great Prince said.

But Matt beamed. "That order had to have been given by Wendy! Hey Friend Owl, where'd you see this happen?"

The owl eyed him suspiciously. "Now why exactly do you want to know that? You want to make us the next victims, perhaps?"

"Oh, c'mon, dude, can you just help us?" asked the Defender, growing more frustrated by the second.

"Matt, be quiet!" said Chikorita. Bambi hung his head slightly and shook it.

Matt snorted and backed away as the small Pokémon stepped forward.

"Look, Friend Owl," she said, "I know you probably don't believe this, but Matt and I are here to help. Not long ago, we were able to defeat one of the two Koopas that are commanding this mass invasion. Your cooperation would be a big help in tracking down the other so we can stop this attack at its source. Now, please, where were you when you heard those orders?"

The perched bird looked the Leaf Pokémon over for several seconds, looking at the bruises and scratches that adorned her body.

The Great Prince, apparently having expected a quick, decisive answer, blinked in realization before his head shot around to face the owl. "Don't tell me you're actually considering agreeing to this!?" he said in disbelief.

"...Well, as much as I hate to admit it, sir," said the owl hesitantly, "it...might very well be wise to do so. I mean, this certainly isn't anywhere near the usual 'Man is in the forest' threats that we're used to."

The earth-vibrating _BOOM_ of an airship cannonball hitting the ground sounded from far away like distant thunder.

"And...if they _do_ know how to remedy a situation like this," Friend Owl continued, "well...I think it would be...possibly fatally counterproductive not to at least trust them until we're safe again."

"I'm starting to like this guy," Matt said to himself, looking at the bird while putting a hand in front of his mouth to hide an emerging grin.

The Great Prince stared at his colleague as though he had no head, something Chikorita wondered if it wasn't exactly what the large deer was thinking right now.

His son didn't wait for a response. "Sounds like you're up for it!" he said to Friend Owl with a relieved smile. "So tell us: Where did this chase take place?"

"Well, uh...Hmmm..." Friend Owl put a wing to his chin and thought for a second. "...I was woken up, I started flying towards the meadow, and I heard them talking when I was about...I'd say around halfway there, over the brook."

"I know exactly where that is," Bambi said to Matt.

"Lead the way, then," the human replied.

Bambi turned and started bounding off into the woods. Chikorita and Matt followed, but they had barely taken their third step before a single authoritative order hit their ears.

"Wait!"

Matt froze along with his companions, fighting the urge to scream in exasperation. He slowly turned back around.

"...Yes?" he asked, holding a wide smile on his face that he was certain would not fool an amnesiac Goomba.

The Great Prince walked up to him, not stopping until they were face-to-face. "I don't trust you not to do something underhoofed unsupervised," he said.

 _Gee, thank you, Captain Obvious,_ Matt thought, struggling not to give away his rapidly mounting frustration.

But it was what the stag said next that made him drop his forced smile: "I want Friend Owl to go along with you."

"...Terrific, a chaperone," Matt snorted with a grimace. "Because we totally need one more Moonview Forest animal in peril."

Bambi gave him an unnerved glance.

"But if that's what it takes to let me do my job, then fine, you got a deal."

The Great Prince turned to his forest neighbor. "Friend Owl, accompany them and make sure they do as they've promised."

He glared down at Matt as Friend Owl flapped his wings and took to the air again. "Don't get any ideas about harming my son."

Matt gawked. "Are you crazy!?" he exclaimed. "I would never harm Bambi; he's one of the few good things I still actually have in my life!"

Chikorita eyed the two with apprehension, knowing that Matt had a greater and greater chance of making the conversation go sour the longer The Great Prince kept it going.

"If you've satisfied your interrogation quota for the day, can I go now?" Matt asked.

Bambi's eye twitched slightly, while Chikorita tried not to flop face-down on the ground. She was all but certain that a question that tactless would not go over well with the Young Prince's father.

But the stag simply snorted softly and backed away from the Defender.

"Thank you," said Matt before turning and running to catch up with his friends, Friend Owl flying overhead.

* * *

Four small cream-colored rabbits huddled together in the darkness of a small underground burrow. The continuous wave of vibrations tearing through the soil had finally stopped after having given them quite the shocking wake-up call and continued for what felt like the better part of the day. None of them had dared to venture outside; with such a plethora of massively powerful tremors, they weren't even sure if the forest above would still be there when they did!

One of the bunnies started brushing off the thin film of dirt specks that had been building up on her fur during the ordeal.

"...H-Hey, Ria," said another. "Think it's okay to go outside now?"

Ria batted at her cottontail. "I think so," she said as her sisters began to dust themselves off as well. "If those earthquakes were going to start again, I think they would have by now."

"I hope Mama and Papa and Big Brother are okay," said a third rabbit.

"We should try and find them!" the fourth exclaimed. "Y'know, just to make sure."

"I like that idea, Trixie!" said Ria. "Tessie, Daisy, let's go!"

The four sisters hopped over to the exit of the burrow and cautiously peered out into the open. To their relief, all the trees, bushes, shrubs, and other plants were still right where they always had been, but the atmosphere was oddly quiet and still. They could not see a single animal anywhere in the area, which itself was far from out of the ordinary; they knew that numerous other forest residents would be in their surroundings even when they could not be seen or heard. But this was different: a complete, almost eerily noiseless calm, as if there _were_ no other animals around besides them at all.

The girls jumped and ducked back into their home when a green creature suddenly leapt down from over the mound their burrow was housed under and landed only a few feet in front of them. They watched the strange animal for a short time as it looked around in front of it, the leaf growing out of its head fluttering ever so slightly over its back. There were several bruises and scratches all over its body.

"A stranger!" Trixie exclaimed.

"From the outside!" added Daisy.

"...ooooOOOOoooo..." said all four in unison.

"Hmm?" The creature turned around to face them. Its red eyes quickly went from surprised to happy. "Oh, hello there!" it said in a somewhat strained voice. "Are you okay?"

"Uh, yeah," Ria replied with a hint of confusion. "We're totally fine."

"Ah, good," said the visitor with a pained smile. "Hey, you're all rabbits; you wouldn't happen to know the whereabouts of another rabbit by the name of Thumper, would you?"

"Thumper?" exclaimed Daisy.

"That's our big brother!" said Tessie.

"Oh, so you're his four sisters!" said the green creature with a wide, warm grin. "Nice to finally meet you! I'm Chikorita."

"Why're you looking for Thumper?" Trixie asked.

"Well, he was with me and a few others before chaos broke loose here in the forest and made us all go running all over the place," said Chikorita. "Bambi wants to make sure he's all right, but we still haven't been able to find him."

She grunted and struggled to stay on her feet. "I've already had to put up a couple of fights in the last few hours while looking for him, and I've got nothing to show for it."

"We'll help you!" said Daisy. "We love our big brother!"

"And we're really good at finding him, too!" said Ria.

"Really?" said Chikorita. "Okay, but stay close to me. There's still very real and active danger out here, so we have to be careful."

The quartet of rabbits hopped along behind Chikorita as she walked on through the woods, looking all around her for any potential hazards. She spotted a beam of magenta light in the distance and turned to start going that way.

"Hello?" she called out into the forest, trying to keep her voice somewhat down. "Thumper?"

"Big Brooooother?" Ria cried.

"Where aaaaaaare yoooooooou?" shouted Trixie.

"Come out, come out, wherever you—!" Chikorita's leaf slapped over Daisy's mouth.

"Hammer Bro, 11 o'clock, take cover!" said the Leaf Pokémon before rushing under a couple of plants with large leaves of their own. The rabbits were quick to follow, vanishing out of sight just in time for a bipedal turtle easily three or four times their size to come sauntering through.

"All right, who was just calling out for her brother?" he wondered to himself, looking around. Chikorita eyed the hammer in his hand, waiting for him to look down, spot them, and throw it.

But a familiar tone began to sound from the Koopa Troop soldier. _" RING, RING, RINGETY RING, RING, RINGETY RING-RING-RING."_

The Hammer Bro whipped out a small metal walkie-talkie-looking device and tapped a few buttons on it.

 _"Status report,"_ Wendy's staticky voice demanded.

"Nothing." The Hammer Bro's voice was weary and irritated. "Just like the last 50 times."

 _"Don't give me that voice!"_ Wendy snapped. _"This is a real problem that we need to solve as soon as possible!"_

"Well, why don't we go look somewhere else for a change? I'm getting sick of coming back here over and over again!"

 _You and me both,_ Chikorita thought.

 _"This has only ever been found buried here in the Moonview Forest,"_ said Wendy. _"We have to keep looking. If we don't hit pay dirt again soon, we're gonna start losing airships!"_

Chikorita paused. "Losing airships?" she wondered to herself. That would certainly explain their almost pathological interest in the Moonview Forest for the last several months.

 _"Now can the attitude, finish up your deep-scan, and then report back to me, got it?"_ Wendy ordered.

"Roger." The Hammer Bro put away his device and snorted to himself. "I swear to the Stars, we've combed this forest enough times to bring it to a formal ball 70 times over."

He turned and started heading for the distant magenta light beam.

Chikorita stepped partway out from her hiding place. "I have to get my legs on that walkie-talkie," she said.

"Really? Why?" Ria asked, coming back out into the open with the others.

"I recognized the voice that Hammer Bro was just talking to; it's the leader of all the intruders in your forest. If we can get that device, my owner Matt will be able to use it to figure out where she is, and then we'll be able to take her out and make them all leave."

She tried to run after the much larger creature, but stifled a shout of pain as her legs seemed to buckle under her weight after just one bound. The four bunnies gasped as she took a few breaths.

"Let us help you!" said Ria, hopping forward. "Matter of fact, I think I know exactly how we can take that...what's-its-name away from that...other what's-its-name."

Chikorita looked up at the rabbit. "What do you have in mind?"

Ria hopped up to Chikorita and started whispering in her ear, her sisters gathering around to listen in, too. The green creature's face went from intrigued to thoughtful to mild shock. She pulled away from the rabbit.

"Are you sure you want to put yourselves in harm's way like that?" she asked worriedly.

"This is our chance to fight back against danger!" said Daisy, a hint of frustrated anger in her voice. "Usually, we have no choice but to run away. So if you know a way we can fight back for once, then by golly, that's what we wanna do!"

"Yeah!" cheered her sisters, Ria even raising her paw into the air.

Chikorita hesitated. "...Okay; if you really want to, I won't shut you out, but... just don't go putting yourselves in unnecessary danger. My owner does that more than enough already."

* * *

The digital aerial map of the Moonview Forest crawled like a lazy Spiny across the cabin monitor. The Hammer Bro helming the airship it was in stared at it, bored out of his mind. They were in the middle of a deep-scan that had been going on for at least an hour now and would easily take two or three more to complete. He took out his walkie-talkie and started staring at that.

 _"AWOO-GAH! AWOO-GAH!"_ A klaxon alarm began to sound from the console.

The Hammer Bro's head shot back up to the monitor, just in time to see the screen start to flicker, lock, and fill with static.

"Interference," he realized. "There's somebody down inside the beam... It better not be the Goombas again!"

He raced out of the cabin, jumped straight off the deck, and twisted around to face the scanning beam as he fell. He caught a glimpse of something grey ducking into a hole in the gently rolling forest ground just before landing.

"There it is."

The soldier crept up to the hole, knelt down, and peered inside. A single grey bunny was cowering inside a small burrow.

"Hey! You're holding us up by standing in our scanner bean!" said the Hammer Bro. "Come out of there and get out of our way!"

The rabbit did not budge.

"Or do I have to dig my way in there and chase you out?" The Hammer Bro put his hands on the top of the alcove opening and started clawing away the dirt.

Five seconds later, the rabbit decided to run. He zoomed out between his assailant's legs and bounded off on a beeline for some plants in the direction the overhead airship was facing, panting with frantic fear as he ran.

"No! Not _that..._ way." The Hammer Bro sighed in exasperation, which only multiplied when he saw two cream paws shoot out from a shrub his target was passing by, snatch him up, and yank him behind it with a surprised scream.

The Hammer Bro tightened his grip on the hammer and walkie-talkie in his hands. There were now at least two animals in an area they still had yet to scan, and would not be able to until they were removed.

He jogged over to the foliage and looked behind it.

Several rabbit-sized holes dotted the dirt ground. The Hammer Bro reached them just in time to see a rabbit cottontail disappear down inside one.

"Just peachy," he grumbled. "We're probably gonna have to dig the whole darned warren out."

He glared down at the holes in the ground and started shouting down into them. "I'm gonna say this one more time before I start digging you out: come out of there and get out of our way!"

A cream rabbit poked its head out. She looked up at the irritated armored turtle, and then flashed a sly smile. "You'll have to catch us first!" she said.

"Grr...!" The Hammer Bro swung his hammer at the rabbit, who retreated down into the hole before the head hit the ground, sending up a tiny burst of dust. Immediately, she seemed to pop up out of another.

"Over here!"

Her voice had changed. No, wait, that was a completely different bunny!

The Hammer Bro tried to flatten the small animal again, but she too proved too quick for her attacker's hammer, disappearing into the ground.

Another rabbit emerged from a third hole. But instead of saying anything, she just blew a raspberry at the Koopa Troop soldier before ducking back to safety. The others began popping out and going back into the other holes with increasing speed and frequency. Who knew exactly how many were holed up down there?

Then the Hammer Bro lost his temper. He went berserk, pounding all the holes with his hammer as fast and furiously as he could. The dust flew with increasing volume as rabbit heads kept disappearing and reappearing in and out of the ground like rocket-powered springs, eluding every hammer strike the Hammer Bro tried to land.

 _"RRRAAAAAGHH!!!"_ the Koopa Troop soldier screamed in fury, wanting to give those bratty little bunnies exactly what they deserved for willfully holding him and his squadron up like this. _"I'LL TEACH YOU TO CAUSE INTERFERENCE IN OUR SCANNING BEAMS!!!"_

A shrub behind them rustled as Chikorita slowly crawled out from it. She tiptoed up to him as quietly as possible.

After a few seconds, the Hammer Bro's arms grew tired, and he had to slow down and stop without connecting with a rabbit even once. He glared with gritted teeth at the group still goading him with their little game.

"Screw it," he said, reaching for his walkie-talkie. "It's time to blast you—!"

He stopped. His walkie-talkie had vanished. He started looking around for it, wondering where it could have possibly gone given that it was as long as his arm and twice as thick.

"Looking for this?"

He looked off to the side.

Chikorita stood a short distance away, holding the Hammer Bro's communication device in her neck vines over her head. She turned and ran away from him, shouting, "Let's go, quick!"

The rabbits, four cream and one grey, abandoned their hiding place and scampered after the green creature.

The Hammer Bro jumped to his feet and wound up his arm, but after seeing the direction they were going, he simply stood and watched them slowly vanish from his sight and into the woods.

"They're out of our way now, and my arms ache," he said, massaging his upper throwing arm. "And it's not like King Bowser can't replace those things like our airships..."

He turned back to his airship, crouched down, and made a large leap from the ground back up to the deck. His fellow brother was waiting.

"Did a Goomba stray into the beam again?" he asked in an annoyed voice.

"I _wish._ "

* * *

A line of Goombas went sailing like a crashing wave through the air as a spinning Koopa Shell carved a path through the soil below. Matt watched them land in the bushes and ricochet off tree trunks. He was breathing heavily and had sweat glistening on his face, arms, and legs. While not having his phone meant he did not know exactly how long he had been searching for and clearing out the Koopa Troop intruders in Bambi's forest, he was positive that it had been going on for a good hour or two. The sun over the treetops had visibly moved in the sky, a sky still swarming with dozens of airships.

He turned around just in time to see Bambi land on and flatten another nearby Goomba before using his tail to smack away another.

Above them, Friend Owl sat on a branch, staring unimpressed down at the Young Prince and his bipedal friend. "Are you even a little bit closer to driving these things out?" he asked, wings on his hips.

Matt glared up at the owl, but shook his head. "Sadly, no."

Bambi's ears began to fall, and he stared gloomily at his front hooves.

Matt turned his head away from the Young Prince, gritting his teeth. He _hated_ feeling this helpless, stuck in the middle of an overwhelming attack force with no clue on the whereabouts of its leader, and seeing his friend in low spirits born of fear for his friends' safety would only make him feel worse. Times like this really made him wonder how Mario and Yoshi could take on situations like this with almost no trouble or assistance from anyone else, and what they were doing right that he wasn't in order to allow that.

 _I'm probably just a bad Defender,_ he thought with a soft snort. _That's the simplest explanation._

A familiar female voice hit his ears: "Matt! Bambi! There you are!"

The human, deer, and owl glanced to the side. Chikorita was running straight for them, five rabbits flanking her and a boxy electronic device in her Vine Whips.

Bambi's face lit up. "Thumper!" he exclaimed, trotting over to meet them. "You're all right!"

"Of course I am!" said the rabbit. "What'dja expect from your bestest friend?"

He put up his front paws like a boxer. "Those turtles were no match for me!"

"What's that in your Vine Whips?" Matt asked his Pokémon.

"A Hammer Bro's walkie-talkie," replied Chikorita. "...that I personally witnessed Wendy call its owner with."

Matt's wide, non-joyful grin creeped onto his face again. Bambi's ears flattened in apprehension.

"Ho ho! Just what I needed!" exclaimed the human, taking the walkie-talkie from her and immediately starting to push buttons. "You're the best, Chikorita!"

"Don't thank me, thank Thumper's sisters. They're the ones who took the lead when I couldn't."

Matt was too engrossed in her find to reply. Technical beeps and trills of all kinds of pitches and durations sounded as Matt's fingers blurred over the device's buttons.

 _"...Got it,"_ he said, his grin widening. He looked up from the device. "Chikorita, Bambi, Friend Owl, get the rabbits to safety and then meet me back at the airship."

The three animals nodded.

"Let's go find my father," said the Young Prince, leading them into the woods while Matt rushed off in the opposite direction.

* * *

Wendy slowly and carefully ran her eyes over the map on her airship's display. In the handful of hours that had gone by since they arrived, they had managed to deep-scan about a quarter of the Moonview Forest thus far, with no sign of any payout. The Koopaling let out a perturbed sigh and tapped the toe of her shoe against the console as the airship dots blinked and crawled over the map, waiting for a hit.

 _I can't stay on this airship for much longer,_ she thought. _I should try to find another real soon._

She watched the dot closest to her location, slowly inching towards it from a couple hundred yards to the north.

 _Why couldn't we be raiding a beach?_ she wondered as the seconds ticked by. _Or a tropical island? Or anywhere but here? I don't know how Iggy can stand it without tearing his hair out. We're spending way too much time, firepower, and Koopa-power just clearing out all these animals. If we were somewhere without them to get in our way, we could have wrapped this up in an hour-and-a-half, even with a deep-scan._

An alert tone started to sound, and the central dot representing her own airship blinked green.

"Oh my Stars!" she murmured. "This place still has some of—!"

The words were barely past her lips when the screen locked up and dissolved to static. She stared for a second before growling and stamping her foot in frustration. She pushed and held down a button on the console.

"We got interference," she said. "Get down there, pronto!"

* * *

Friend Owl flew in a circle inside the magenta beam, hoping that whatever Matt wanted to happen via this strange action would quickly. He had absolutely no clue what kind of light or other substance the strange phenomenon was made of, and did not want to hang out in it long enough for it to start potentially doing serious damage to his body.

He started hearing leaping sounds from above him, and several Goombas, Koopas, and Bob-ombs began to fall from the overhead ship down to the ground below. They converged around the beam only to stare up in confusion at what was within it.

 _Seems none of them have wings,_ the owl observed, watching them as he continued circling. _I wonder how long before ones _with_ wings come?_

The enemies kept staring at him for several seconds, doing nothing. They were generally clustered in groups of about seven to ten of their own species: Goombas with Goombas, Koopas with Koopas, and Bob-ombs with Bob-ombs, though there were a few spots around the ring where they were intermingled in no particular way.

Then a clinking/ratcheting sound ground through the air.

"Why are you nitwits just standing there!?" a voice demanded. Friend Owl watched as an anchor and chain came down from the ship. Wendy was riding on it, her back to the beam, allowing him to see the spikes adorning it that all the other Koopas lacked.

"Do I have to do _everything_ myself?" she asked in exasperation as the anchor stopped just above one of the larger clusters of Bob-ombs. She turned around and looked at the animal behind her. "...Oh, of course. I have a totally wingless force and have to contend with a stupid little bird."

 _Stupid!?_ Friend Owl thought. _Where does that impudent critter get off talking like that? Why, if only I knew how, I'd teach her a lesson!_

He was seriously considering dive-bombing Wendy for her remark, but stopped when Wendy began charging up her wand. She drew her arm back, eyeing her target coldly as the tip of her wand bubbled and boiled with red-orange energy.

_Oh dear, I should get out of here!_

_** Thunk! ** _

The sound came just in time for Wendy to stop herself and stare up at her airship. Friend Owl had already abandoned his circle path and was flying out from underneath it. After passing over Wendy's head, he turned around and looked up for himself.

Another airship was hovering high over Wendy's, its anchor standing somewhat precariously on her ship's deck. Looking closer, he could see Bambi floating down from the ship above, waving his Tanooki tail up and down to control the speed of his descent. Matt was just about off the higher airship himself, hanging off the edge of the deck above the chain with Chikorita on his shoulder. He let go and grabbed the chain as he fell to it, sliding down after the Young Prince.

Wendy's eyes widened. "It was a trick!" she exclaimed.

Looking down at the Bob-ombs just under her feet, she whipped around, raised her still-charged wand over her head, and brought it down on them with a forceful flick. A burst of flamelike energy engulfed them all momentarily, dissipating into squares, triangles, and circles almost instantly. Once it did, all the fuses on the Bob-ombs were burning.

Friend Owl watched them for a couple of seconds, unsure what Wendy was trying to do, but when the Bob-ombs began flashing red, he decided it would probably be best to hightail it up to the airship to meet the others.

_**KABLAM!!!** _

Wendy and the anchor she was on rocketed up into the sky as a large explosion tore a crater in the ground of the Moonview Forest. Friend Owl barely missed both her and a few of several other Koopa Troop soldiers near the blast that were thrown through the air as well.

Wendy jumped off her impromptu vehicle as it passed her ship's deck. Bambi, Chikorita, and Matt all saw the anchor shooting up at them, but none of them had any time to react with any more than wide eyes, and in Bambi's case, a cut-off scream.

One of the end hooks clipped the Young Prince in the side, launching him backwards and upwards, before the mass of metal slowed and then fell back down onto the deck with a crash. Its chain swung loosely over the side of the airship.

Matt tried to stop his downward slide, but to no avail. Bambi struck him square in his own side. The descending Defender lost both of his footholds and one of his handholds on the chain as he swung out from the impact. He tried to twist his body back in hopes of snaring the free-flying line of metal links, but at that moment, he felt Chikorita lose her footing on his shoulder and roll down and off his upper arm.

Matt twisted the other way as hard as he could and desperately lunged his hands out as though he were trying to save someone from falling into lava. Against all his expectations, he felt his hands catch his Pokémon without her slipping through his fingers. It was only an instant later that he realized he had let go of the chain completely.

_**Oh, crap...** _

The duo fell several feet to the wooden airship deck below, landing with a hearty thud.

 _"...Ow,"_ said Matt, now flat on his face. He looked up at Chikorita, still in his hands. She was on her stomach as well, cringing in pain.

 _UGH!_ Matt thought. _I think she hit the floor hard, anyway._

He looked to his right. Bambi was staring blankly at a spot on the deck a few feet in front of him. His legs were spread out as if he had just saved himself from slipping and falling onto ice. He no longer had the Tanooki Suit covering his body, but the Young Prince looked otherwise unharmed.

Friend Owl flew down to Bambi's eye-level. "Dear me, Young Prince, are you all right?"

"...I...I think so," said Bambi, sounding about as disoriented as he looked.

Matt stood up and took a second to check his Pokémon over more thoroughly. "You hurt?" he asked. "Any more than you were, I mean?"

 _"Mmm..."_ The Leaf Pokémon groaned as she tried to move in her owner's arms. "I think I'm pretty close to fainting, Matt."

"Just hold out a little longer," said Matt. "I'm positive we're almost done."

He looked around him on the deck. The anchor whose chain he had slid down on was swinging freely next to them, no longer tottering on the deck itself.

He looked back at the anchor laying on the bow. "Where'd Wendy disappear off to? She was on that anchor."

"I saw her make a beeline for that burrow there." Friend Owl gestured his head towards the doorway in the rear of the airship.

"Awesome, let's go!" said Matt, running for the doorway with Bambi close behind.

The cabin was nearly identical to that of the airship he had previously captured. Matt quickly spotted the ship's control console and map monitor on the left side of the opposite wall, but there was nothing else inside the large room.

"I don't see Wendy," said Chikorita as Matt gently set her down.

"Me neither," said Matt, looking down the wall to his left.

"Bambi! Over here!" exclaimed a relieved voice.

The trio looked across the room. Faline stood near the right side of the opposite wall, tied to it like a dog by a thick rope around her neck.

"...Nice collar," Matt said in his deadpan unamused voice.

"Matt, really?" Chikorita chided, looking up at him.

"Faline!" Bambi ran ahead of Matt as they made a beeline for the other young deer. "I'm so glad to see you're oka—"

He stopped and paused in confusion when a black circular shadow suddenly appeared over him.

Matt took one look above him before shouting, "Chikorita, Vine Whip, quick!"

Chikorita's vines shot out like two missiles from her neck, snatching and yanking back the shocked fawn just in time to avoid Wendy making a hard landing right on his head. The small grass critter panted in exhaustion as she released Bambi and withdrew her vines.

"You just don't know when to quit, do you?" asked Wendy.

"You're one to talk," Matt answered. "Last chance, Wendy; give up the fawn and get out of the Moonview Forest."

"I don't think so," the Koopaling replied. "The real last chance is on you; stop interfering with me and my troops and let us do what we have to do in the Moonview Forest. If you do, then when we're done, we'll leave you alone. Do we have a deal?"

Matt folded his arms and stared at Wendy, unimpressed. "What do _you_ think?"

Wendy twirled her wand casually in one hand while cleaning the nails on her other. "I think you're awfully arrogant for your competence level, you know. What makes you think you have any chance at all against one of the Koopa Troop's best soldiers?"

"Wendy, I've seen the Koopa Troop's track record with Mario," said Matt. "Granted, I'm far from Mario, but do you still honestly think you have a shot against a Mushroom Kingdom Defender?"

"Well, what was it you said to me before?" said the Koopaling in thinly veiled mock thought. "Yippee-ki-yay...Matt."

Matt stared blankly at her. "...No. Just...n—you can't do it, okay, Wendy?"

"...Okay." Wendy grinned wickedly. "But I _can_ do this!"

She whirled her wand like a huge lasso and whipped it straight at the trio of rescuers. A huge horizontal, glowing yellow ring materialized and floated briskly towards them.

"Whoa, watch out!" Matt jumped backwards into a corner of the cabin. Bambi bounded into the corner to his right, while Chikorita dashed to the one on his left, near the console. The ring sailed past him and dissipated on hitting the wall.

The Defender kept his eyes on the captive Faline in the corner of the room directly opposite his. He glanced at Bambi, who was also eyeing his friend, a leg raised tentatively as if he were trying to decide if he should attempt to dash past the Koopaling to her.

Chikorita, however, was not inclined to wait. She caught her owner's attention out the corner of his eye as she made her own mad dash for Faline from her nook of the room.

"Oh, I don't think so!" Wendy jumped in front of the Pokémon and sent out another yellow ring.

Chikorita strained to whirl up her head leaf and throw out a barrage of Razor Leaves. The ring flexed and clinked with each strike, but kept barreling on until it was close enough for Chikorita to strike it with her head leaf directly. That was enough to make the ring shatter and disintegrate, but the Leaf Pokémon jumped backwards with a sharp yelp. She stood upright and grasped her leaf with her front legs, wincing in agony.

Matt took a couple of steps forward, trying to gauge if Wendy still had any of her attention on him. Bambi was slowly creeping forward, too, a little bit faster than him. As Chikorita hit and destroyed Wendy's large projectile, the Young Prince broke out into a gallop, trying to reach Faline.

But Wendy spotted him and jumped back over to block his way to her hostage. Bambi stopped as his foe twirled around and sent out an expanding wave of several rings all at once.

The fawn gasped, twisted around, and ran back to his corner.

"Bambi, jump!" Matt shouted as the wave spread. "Running won't help you!"

Chikorita watched her two allies each leap twice, into and out of the center of the rings as they reached them. Wendy had left a clear path to Faline that her propagating ring wave was going to close in a few seconds.

She crouched and tried to get herself running again, but as her legs tried to thrust her forward, they gave out under her weight and she collapsed on her stomach.

The Leaf Pokémon was finally out for the count. She gritted her teeth in frustration as she watched the attack. The opening to Faline was sitting right in front of her, almost _taunting_ her, and there was no way for her to take it.

 _Or maybe there is,_ she thought.

She forced herself back to her feet. _C'mon, just one last attack..._

Trying to block out the pain and muster up all the energy she had left, she wound up her leaf and threw a single Razor Leaf straight at Faline. Instantly, she fell on her side and fainted.

The boomerang-like leaf slipped behind Wendy's ring wave and flew on towards Faline. Matt and Bambi watched as the projectile hit the rope she was tied to, slicing through it with no trouble.

"She got it!" Matt shouted.

"Faline, quick! Get out of there!" Bambi urged.

The freed deer looked over her shoulder in surprise, but then immediately obliged as Wendy turned around to see what her opponents were shouting about, the loose rope swinging freely behind her as she tried to run to Bambi.

"Oh, no you don't!" Wendy dove for and snatched up the rope as the fawn passed her. Faline reared up on her hind legs, gagging as Wendy tried to yank her back.

But the struggle was short.

Matt rushed in and stomped Wendy on the head. _"BLEH!"_ She let go of the rope and fell to her stomach. Faline bounded out of the Koopaling's reach and over to her friend.

"Let's get out of here!" Bambi said, turning and galloping straight for the cabin doorway with Faline close behind.

Chikorita opened her eyes and watched them race back out to the airship's deck before looking back just in time to see Wendy jump to her feet and throw herself at Matt with a ferocious snarl. A cloud of dust quickly obscured them both from her view.

"I'll have your neck for this!" the Koopaling's voice snarled from inside the cloud. "That deer was mine!"

"Not anymore!" Matt's voice was strained, as if he were being throttled at the throat. "And my neck...ain't goin' _nowhere!_ "

Chikorita heard a punch fly. Several more came after, each punctuating a couple of words Matt was choking out. "You should've heard your brother squeal...when I bashed his frickin' head in!"

The Leaf Pokémon hoped her owner was exaggerating, and not just to keep from further incurring Wendy's wrath.

 _"RRRAGH!"_ Matt's grunt of exertion accompanied Wendy suddenly flying sideways out of the cloud, which dissipated to reveal him down on one knee, panting heavily and massaging his neck.

"That girl's got good grip," he said, staggering to his feet. He ran for his fainted Pokémon, scooped her back up in his arms, and rushed out of the cabin.

The sun's rays greeted them as they came back out onto the deck. Friend Owl was floating over the two fawns.

"Let's go!" said Matt as he rushed towards them. "We got who we came for."

"But how are we supposed to get back down without breaking our legs?" Bambi asked.

Matt glanced over the side of the ship, which was still floating in the forest treetops. He glanced at Bambi and saw that he no longer had his Tanooki Suit.

"Good question," he said, remembering that they did not know how to jump from high up and make a safe landing like him, Mario, and Yoshi.

Distant cannon shots sounded from the airships far above the one they were fighting on and the one they had arrived on, but Matt blocked it out. He tried to figure out a way to get the fawns safely back down to the Moonview Forest, but every way he thought of required resources or experience he didn't have. His partner had fainted, so he would have to pull it off himself; but at the same time, he didn't trust himself to land with the weight of both deer on him without injuring everyone involved; and yet, he also had no way to feasibly return to the deck once he left, so taking them one-by-one was out, too.

Matt looked back at Bambi, Faline, and Friend Owl, and his eyes immediately focused on the latter.

"That's how!" he said, pointing to Friend Owl. "He can carry you down!"

"...I'm sorry!?" Friend Owl stared back at the Defender.

"You can grab them and ferry them down in your talons! Mario rides owls that way all the time!"

"What do you think we are, squirrels?" said Faline with an unamused grimace.

"But there's no way he's strong enough to do that!" Bambi protested.

"Well, of course he's not if you both go together!" said Matt. "I was talking about going one at a time!"

"I'm pretty sure I'm not strong enough for that, either," said Friend Owl with an unamused grimace of his own.

Something struck Matt's heels. Hard. Instantly, he was on his back.

He checked to see he still had Chikorita, and then looked up. Friend Owl had not moved, but Bambi and Faline had. The Young Prince was on the roof of the ship's aftercastle that housed the control room, while Faline had fled down to the bow and now stood near the anchor still sitting on the deck. Both were nervously watching Wendy's shell spinning in place like a top in the center of the deck. It slowed to a hasty stop and her head, arms, and legs popped out.

Matt jumped back to his feet along with his opponent. He glared at the Koopaling.

"Next time, don't leave me in the control room without defeating me!" she said to him, grinning confidently.

Matt shifted his eyes up to Bambi, who was watching him. He nodded his head ever-so-slightly towards the Koopaling. Bambi's ears perked, his eyes twitching slightly, and then he started slinking away from them, towards the airship stern.

"Reinforcements are on their way now," Wendy continued. " _Aerial_ reinforce—!"

She couldn't finish. Bambi ran and jumped off his perch over the others, coming down with all four hooves on Wendy's head as hard as he could and trying not to slip and fall as he bounced back off and onto the deck. The Koopaling fell forward onto her stomach.

"Next time, don't gloat to us without defeating us!" said Matt with one of his smirks.

The distant sound of cannons firing from the highest airships had not stopped. Matt looked up at the sky.

He panicked and scrambled to the side just before a falling Bob-omb could hit him in the head. The animals with him looked up for themselves.

The cream shell undersides of many slowly descending Koopa Paratroopas accompanied an equal number of Bob-ombs floating gently down on blue- and white-striped parachutes.

"Oh, buck," Bambi shuddered.

"'Oh, buck' is right," said Matt. "Paratroopas and Parabombs by the bucketload!"

He heard Wendy charging her wand. He looked just in time to see her throw a magic orange fireball at him. His foot hit the nearby Bob-omb as he attempted to dodge, and he lost his balance.

Ordinarily, such a fumble wouldn't be of much hindrance, but with his arms still cradling Chikorita, Matt wound up falling all the way down, hitting the wooden deck on his side. He took his forward momentum and rolled onto his back and then his other side in one fluid motion before curling into a ball and springing back up to a standing position.

Wendy sent a couple more shots at him. He jumped and ducked as he needed, making his way towards Friend Owl.

Bambi ran along the deck's opposite edge as the first few Parabombs and Paratroopas touched down nearby.

"Don't bring that murderous animal's attacks closer to me!" Friend Owl said as Matt reached him.

The Defender ignored his request. "Do me a favor and get Chikorita out of here. I can't fight great if my arms are tied up holding something."

Friend Owl said nothing, simply looking at him with the same disapproving stare he had since meeting up with him.

Matt glanced quickly at Wendy, charging another fireball, and then back to the bird. "...Would it help if I said 'Please?'" he added hastily.

Wendy pointed her wand and cast another ball of mystical flame.

"...It might help if you said it more sincerely," said the owl.

They ducked away from each other as the blast flew between them. But as the grumpy animal came back, he flattened his back out and fluttered a little lower, within Matt's reach.

Matt set his Pokémon on the bird's back, and Friend Owl immediately soared off the airship in a downward glide towards the Moonview Forest ground.

Matt turned back to the deck. Several more Paratroopas and Parabombs had reached them. Bambi was stomping shells and kicking them both at other enemies and just straight off the deck, while Wendy had stopped casting fireballs and was now jumping around the deck amidst the slowly growing horde of Koopa Troop turtles and bombs.

"We're gonna get swarmed before long!" the Young Prince cried, unable to dispatch the threats quickly and cleanly enough to counteract the rate at which they were dropping down.

Matt went for the nearest Paratroopa, stomped it twice, judged his aim, and gave it a kick of his own. The shell hit and took out a Paratroopa before bouncing off the anchor and striking three Bob-ombs as it rocketed from bow to stern.

Matt ran to intercept his projectile, stomped it again to stop it, and then kicked it a second time. This time, the shell hit two Paratroopas he felt were a little too close to Bambi before soaring off the airship.

With the deck cleared up a little, Matt set his sights back on Wendy, still bouncing like a frog with a Spring Mushroom. She stopped, whirled around, and sent a wave of fireballs into the airdropping reinforcements before resuming her evasive maneuver.

A good portion of the rising fireballs wound up hitting Parabombs, lighting their fuses and detaching them from their parachutes prematurely. The alight black balls plummeted to the deck and sat, waiting for their fuses to burn down.

Bambi sprinted erratically back and forth across the deck, trying desperately not to get caught in any of the impending blasts. He could see Matt doing the same, keeping his eye on Wendy. The small fawn's eyes darted all around the ship, and everywhere he looked, a Bob-omb sat with its detonation imminent. No spot looked safe.

_Boom! Boom-BOOM Boom! **BOOM!!!**_

The sounds and flashes of fire burst in irregular intervals, about one to three at a time, shaking the floating airship violently. Bambi tried to stay on his hooves, but the rapid-fire, asymmetrically timed detonations soon proved enough to make his front leg slip, and he stumbled forward and fell on his chest, right next to where Wendy had just landed.

Too slow to avoid or correct, the Koopaling's feet caught on the Young Prince's body, and she tripped and rolled head-over-heels several feet across the deck.

"Stomp her again, Bambi!" Matt shouted, cornered by a Parabomb and a couple of Paratroopas on the edge of the deck by the control room.

Bambi's head shot to the side to see a discombobulated Wendy on her shell. His eyes narrowed in a glare. He knew what had happened the last time he hesitated. That wasn't going to happen again.

The Young Prince jumped back to his hooves and broke into a gallop, running away and curving back towards his target to build up speed. He leapt as high as he could, tucking his legs in as if to do a cannonball into water. When he was over the Koopaling, he thrust them back out and came straight down onto her stomach. Wendy's body recoiled from the impact.

Matt dove forward between the Paratroopas and segued into a somersault as he hit the deck behind them. He jumped back up and ran over to Bambi. "Nice job!" he exclaimed.

Bambi smiled. "Is that it?"

"Yeah, that oughta do it! Three stomps is what "

Bambi trotted towards where Faline still stood at the bow, while Matt looked back at the Koopaling lying at his feet.

She lunged back up and hit him in the stomach, knocking him onto his back. With her foe at her mercy, Wendy aimed straight for the medical pad on Matt's shoulder and stabbed it with the handle of her wand, puncturing it effortlessly.

 _ **"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!"**_ The resultant screech of pain that Matt released rattled her ears enough to leave them ringing, but it was also one of the most satisfying things she had heard in quite a few months. Bambi and Faline cringed, flattening their ears, and looked back at the two.

Wendy backflipped off Matt as he clutched his shoulder and writhed on the ground before springing straight up off the deck into the air. Two Paratroopas caught her arms.

"A scrawny fawn's gonna have to stomp harder than that to beat me!" she yelled down to the shocked human and young white-tailed deer.

Matt slowly stood up. The Parabombs and Paratroopas were still coming down from above, and it looked like the airships had decided to start sending larger-than-normal Bob-ombs down on parachutes, too. He had never seen that with Parabombs before, but then again, maybe the Koopa Troop was being smart for once and taking him seriously.

Wendy charged her wand with another magic fire attack and, aiming as best she could when two Paratroopas were holding her by the arms, sent out a fan of flame into the crowd of parachuting bombs. The wave successfully lit and detached several Bob-ombs from their chutes, but only about four or five landed on the airship under them, with the rest falling to the forest floor.

Bambi started to run away again, but hesitated as Matt rushed around him, going straight for each Bob-omb and swiping it up in his hands. Holding his small reserve in his injured arm, he wound up his uninjured arm and hurled them one-by-one up into the group of airborne bombs above, aiming with only so much effot to get rid of them before they exploded in his hands.

Wendy charged her wand back up as the first two sailed past her, respectively exploding harmlessly and knocking out a Paratroopa some distance away. The third sailed way off-course, hitting nothing at all, while the fourth struck and knocked away a Parabomb underneath her on its way up. But just as her wand reached maximum power and she was starting to cast it, the last Bob-omb flew up and hit one of the Paratroopas holding her in the air.

_**BAM!!!** _

The other Paratroopa struggled to hang on to its boss as its partner let go and fell out of the sky.

 _"Wha-HAAH!"_ Wendy's attack spewed fire out crookedly and unevenly as she swung around on her remaining midair anchor. Another Paratroopa swooped in and caught her before she slipped out of the other's grasp.

Matt ducked and then backwards-somersaulted across the deck as the lopsided fire wave roared down only a few inches over him. Bambi leapt over it to avoid getting burned himself.

Matt jumped right back to his feet and ran away from the Young Prince, towards the bow, watching the other end of Wendy's attack propagate up through the cluster of enemies. It ripped through several of the winged turtles and dropping explosives, knocking them into free-fall mostly to the ground below. Matt gauged a couple of them falling on a course for the deck, and adjusted his position on the deck as the conflagration wave cut through the last of the Paratroopas and Parabombs, hitting, igniting, and shedding the chute of one last of the latter.

Matt's confidence vanished. That last Parabomb was one of the big ones, and its trajectory...

His head shot over to Faline, then back up to the sky, and then went back and forth between the two for a few seconds, hesitating less each time until it looked like he was shaking off dizziness.

He stopped himself as the plummeting bomb picked up speed "OmiArceus..." he murmured.

The blue-eyed fawn, having stayed where she currently was for most of the calamity, noticed the human frantically whipping his head back and forth between her and something overhead. She felt her stomach knotting up. Taking a small breath, she looked up into the sky. Her anxiety turned to terror as her eyes popped, her jaw dropped, and she screamed.

Matt sprinted back towards Bambi at the stern as the large Bob-omb fell dead center onto the bow behind Faline.

_**KABOOM!!!** _

Matt jumped just before the explosion blasted a substantial part of the airship's bow into splinters, which rained down on the woods below. The deck heaved violently up and down, tossing Bambi a full three feet into the air. The shockwave felt like a huge fist punching the Defender in the chest as his feet landed on the deck, and unaffected by its physical jolt, skidded to a stop and doubled back on his path again.

Bambi stared in shock at the bow. _"FALIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNEEE!!!"_

The huge Bob-omb had launched her and the anchor she was next to several feet into the air. They followed a similar high arch trajectory in opposite directions, a trajectory set to send them both overboard.

 _"HEEEEEEEEELLLPPP!!!"_ Faline wailed, tumbling helplessly head-over-hooves as she hurtled up towards the sky.

Matt threw his brain into overdrive as he neared the airship's truncated bow. That fawn stood a good chance of serious injury or worse unless her freefall was interrupted. But he had neither Chikorita nor a Tanooki Suit anymore. How else could he break Faline's fall before the ground at least two stories below him did?

The corner of his eye caught the anchor on the opposite side as it started falling from the apex of its arc. And with it came a brain spark.

Matt sprinted away from Faline and vaulted off the other side of the deck like a swimmer off a diving board on fire, stretching his arms out in a diving catch as he flew almost perfectly horizontally through the air.

For once, his aim was perfect, seizing the huge piece of metal in the middle of its drop just as it fell past the deck. He planted his feet on the bottom hooks and clung to the center post as the shock of the chain pulling taut trembled through his body a second later, rattling his joints and sending a wave of pain through his shoulder wound. He clenched his teeth and groaned as the anchor swung back towards its pivot, spinning slightly, and kept going under the hull of the airship.

Matt shifted to lean out from his perch by one hand and one foot, extending his other hand out as far as he possibly could. _Ow my shoulder, Ow my shoulder, Ow my shoulder...!_ he thought, trying to block out the pain from the stress he was putting on his wound as the anchor came out from under the floating vessel and began the counter-swing up the opposite side.

Bambi stood at the edge of the deck, watching in near-tearful abject horror at the unfolding chaos as Faline plummeted past him, well out and away from the airship and where he could do anything to save her. His heart raced at levels not even the presence of Man had ever produced in him; was he about to lose his friend right before his eyes?

The Young Prince was so frozen in his fear that he didn't notice the ship's anchor swing out and up right away. In fact, he wasn't even sure what it was until Matt triumphantly yelled one word:

_"GOTCHA!"_

Bambi snapped out of his petrified terror as the anchor soared up towards him. Matt was riding it by one hand and one foot, his other arm locked around his stunned friend's midsection and a huge, triumphant, toothy smile plastered across his face.

 _He caught her!_ Bambi's face lit up, and he let out a large, relieved breath.

But as the anchor reached the peak of its arc just above the deck, though his mouth never changed, Matt's eyes morphed from triumphant joy to blank terror.

Then Bambi's relief seesawed back to dread as gravity retook control of the anchor and it fell and swung back the way it came under the airship.

 _"WHOOOAAAIEEEEEE!!!" "AAAAAAAAH!!!"_ The pair's shocked screams rattled the air as the anchor disappeared from the Young Prince's sight. The chaotic mashup of loose chain links clinking, grunts of impact from his two friends, and cracks of anchor striking tree cut them off seconds later.

Bambi rushed back over the deck to the other side and looked down.

The anchor was hanging by one of its end hooks on a thick tree branch some distance below and off to the side of the airship, its chain coiled around it several times. Faline lay bound between the chain and branch on her stomach with her legs dangling over the edge. Matt straddled the end of the chain hanging loose underneath the branch between his legs while clinging to the arms of the anchor it was attached to.

Faline looked around her, blinking her eyes. The fear in her face faded. "...I might just be new to this sort of thing," she said to Matt, "but this kind of seems like a little bit of a step backwards."

"Gee, you don't say?" Matt snorted, trying to keep himself from flipping over off the chain.

Bambi looked back up at Wendy, who was being carried up to the airship overhead by Paratroopas. Even after the beating she had taken from their battle, she still looked like she could fight.

He watched the Paratroopas deposit the Koopaling onto the deck before she disappeared from his sight. He tensed in anticipation of what attack she might send their way next.

* * *

Wendy rushed into the airship cabin and ran for the computer console. She watched the display for a second.

"...Holy Stars, did he capture a command airship!?" she exclaimed. Her eyebrows furrowed and her lips scrunched up. "...We should probably go before our operation _really_ starts going sour. They'll never be able to chase us in that other airship, anyway."

She punched a few buttons on the console.

* * *

The propellers of the overhead airship began picking up speed. Bambi crouched under the intense downdrafts and shut his eyes as the ship began to rise. The metallic ratcheting grated on his eardrums as the ship began slowly retracting its anchor.

The Paratroopas between the two airships began swooping around, taking the Parabombs by their parachutes and flying back up into the sky towards the airships they originated from, the ones seemingly miles above the forest.

As Wendy's ship ascended and the downdrafts subsided, Bambi opened his eyes and scanned the surrounding sky. To his surprise and confusion, most of the multitude of airships that had been occupying the forest airspace had completely disappeared. He didn't even see any flying away from the forest. Less than a quarter still hovered in place over the Moonview Forest's treetops, dispersed thinly over them as dozens of Koopa Troop enemies retreated out from within the woods and onto them.

 _Where'd they all go?_ he wondered. They had been swarming the forest like a hive of bees mere moments ago, or at least that's what he thought had been the case. And now they were gone, vanished without a trace.

"Hey, Matt!" he called down. "They seem to be leaving!"

Matt was still on the anchor, standing delicately on its arms with his own arms grabbing the branch. He pulled himself up onto the thick bough and crawled over to Faline.

"All right, let's get you free," he said, going first for the rope still tied around the young fawn's neck. After removing and tossing it down to the ground, he gingerly stood up on the branch and started loosening the chain coils binding her to it.

Down on the ground, Chikorita slowly staggered out from behind some shrubs. Having some time to rest meant she could at least walk again. Thumper, his sisters, and Flower followed behind her, while Friend Owl flew overhead, looking down at the human and two deer to make sure they weren't hurt.

The chain links clinked and rattled as Matt worked out more and more slack. Finally, he was able to take Faline and slide her out from under them.

"Okay, now what's your plan to get us back to the ground?" she asked as Matt picked her up.

"A jump."

"WHAT?" Faline could say no more before Matt casually hopped right off their perch. He somersaulted forward once in midair before landing on the ground, letting his knees bend to absorb the shock. He set the frazzled fawn down and headed for the airship.

"Sit tight, Bambi!" he called up. "I'll get you down from there in no time!"

 _...Why should I sit?_ the Young Prince thought, listening to the airship and the whir of the engine powering its lift propellers.

_ZZHhhhoo ooom..._

Bambi's head jerked around as the airship seemed to power down. The propellers began to slow down, and he felt the ship start to descend.

_Uh oh!_

_**CRUNCH!** _

The ship's dying propellers kept it from falling fast, but it still hit the ground hard enough to crack the bottom of its hull. Bambi's legs collapsed under him and he fell on his belly.

"What was that all about?" Thumper asked, looking at the huge sea vessel as the propellers slowed to a halt.

Matt ran for the airship, jumping once, twice, and then soaring up on the third towards the deck. He fell short of landing on it directly, but grabbed the edge and pulled himself up.

Bambi watched Matt run right past him and back into the cabin. Friend Owl glided down and landed on the deck next to him. "Are you hurt, Young Prince?"

"I don't think so," said Bambi, standing back up.

"Oh, good," said the owl. "Your father will be very glad to hear that."

Matt came jogging back out of the airship cabin. "C'mon," he said to Bambi, picking him up. "Let's get you down from here."

He leapt off the deck onto the forest floor. Friend Owl flew over to and perched on a nearby branch, watching the group below.

As soon as Matt set him down, Bambi ran over to Faline, who ran herself to meet him. "Are you all right?" the Young Prince asked.

"I'm fine; what about you?" Faline replied. "Are _you_ all right?"

Bambi looked himself over for a second. "Surprisingly, yes."

Faline let out a sigh of relief. "Good," she said. "I'm sure you had to put yourself in great danger to come find and save me like that."

"Hey, you got fawn-napped," said the Young Prince. "I wasn't about to just let them take you away; I don't think that'd be a very princely thing to do."

His friend smiled. "Well...thank you for rescuing me."

She leaned in and gave Bambi a slow, gentle lick on the cheek. Matt watched him blush.

 _"Awwwww..."_ said Thumper's sisters and Flower in unison.

"Blech!" said Thumper under his breath.

Friend Owl crossed his wings and said something under his breath as well, though he was too far away for Matt to hear it.

"...Heh, heh..." said the Young Prince nervously to his friend. "Any time!"

"Why're you nervous?" Matt quipped, an amused smirk/cocked eyebrow pair on his face. "Getting a kiss from the girl you saved is practically standard for rescues like this! Enjoy it!"

The animals stared at the human.

"...What now?" said Matt, looking around back at them.

Chikorita shook her head to herself. "What happened with the airship just cutting out like that?" she asked.

"Don't know, but it's dead," said her owner. "Some sort of remote kill switch to keep us from using it to follow them, I'll bet."

"Were you actually planning on doing that?" Chikorita asked.

"For once, no," said Matt. "The fact that we drove such a huge force out of the Moonview Forest is good enough for me today. Assuming they don't decide to come back _again,_ looking for...whatever the heck it is they're looking for."

"Y'know, when I overheard Wendy on that radio, she said they'd start losing airships if they didn't come up with a find soon," said Chikorita. "She also said they've only found whatever they're searching for here in the Moonview Forest."

 _"...Delightful."_ Matt rolled his eyes.

He spotted a familiar face out the corner of his eye. He turned as The Great Prince came out from the surrounding trees, walking as sternly as ever towards him and the other animals.

"Hey, Bambi's dad," said Matt, trying to hide the sarcasm in his voice. "What's up?"

The stag looked at his son, and then him. "All of a sudden, every creature here seems to have changed its mind and started retreating," he said suspiciously. "What's going on?"

"Remember what I said about striking the head of the unit to get 'em out of here?" said Matt.

The Great Prince glanced up at the few retreating airships still in the sky over them.

Matt did not wait for a reply. "There you go."

The stag's attention shifted to the huge, black smoke plumes still rising out of the forest canopy some distance away. "Is the forest on fire?"

"No, but it's gonna need about an equal number of tree seeds and calendar years before it gets back to what it was this morning."

The Great Prince grimaced down at him. _How can he have such a frivolous view of this ordeal that has terrorized and displaced so many of my subjects?_ he thought. _And what on earth is a "calendar"?_

"In any case, you'll be happy to hear that my work here is done," said Matt, dusting his hands off. "I'll get out of your antlers now."

"Now wait just a moment!" said the large deer before Matt could even turn away. "You think you can just leave after all the damage the forest has taken!?"

Matt stared back up at him in annoyed confusion. "I thought that's what you wanted me to do."

The Great Prince said nothing.

"But if you actually want me to stick around, I'll certainly be back the next time they are."

"Wait..." Flower clenched his tail in his hands. "You think...they'll come back?"

"Oh, I _know_ they'll come back," said Matt. "Airships are the backbone of the Koopa Troop. If what Chikorita overheard is true, and they're looking for a resource that their airships can't function without, there's no way they're gonna give up as easily as they usually do, 'cause that would mean shutting down most of their attack force.

"They'll definitely be back. When, I don't know. But now that you guys and the rest of the Moonview Forest have been through one aggressive occupation, you'll know what to do next time."

"Run for our lives?" said Thumper, unimpressed.

"Yeah, exactly!" Matt grinned.

The animals glanced amongst themselves. Matt walked over to Chikorita, who had a foot on her forehead, and picked her up.

"But right now," he said to the Leaf Pokémon as he turned and walked away, " _you_ need a nice, long rest...Couple weeks oughta do it."

Chikorita chuckled. "I don't think I'll need quite _that_ long."


End file.
